Macleans.ca » ontariohttp://www.macleans.ca
Canada's national weekly current affairs magazineTue, 03 Mar 2015 21:58:13 +0000en-CAhourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2Wynne says some sex-ed protesters motivated by homophobiahttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/wynne-says-some-sex-education-protesters-motivated-by-homophobia/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/wynne-says-some-sex-education-protesters-motivated-by-homophobia/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 10:13:45 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=685193Protestors on Tuesday said the government was introducing ideas like same sex relationships and masturbation too early for some kids

TORONTO – Premier Kathleen Wynne says she has no doubt homophobia motivated some of the hundreds of people who protested Ontario’s new sex education curriculum this week.

Wynne, who is gay, says she looked at the protest on the front lawn of Queen’s Park and social media comments on the revised curriculum and concluded some of the opposition is homophobic.

Many of those at Tuesday’s protest said the government was introducing ideas like same sex relationships and masturbation too early for some kids, but others brandished signs with more extreme messages.

Wynne told The Canadian Press that there’s no doubt in her mind that homophobia “is part of the motivating drive behind some of the protests.”

Wynne says people will have to draw their own conclusions about why Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Monte McNaughton says she is not qualified to propose a new sex-ed curriculum.

McNaughton was fuming after Wynne suggested his questions were homophobic, calling it “the lowest thing a premier could say about another legislator.”

He says the only point he’s raised is that the Liberals failed to consult enough parents before introducing the revised sex-ed curriculum, which the government says will be implemented this fall without any changes.

“It’s not the premier of Ontario’s job, especially Kathleen Wynne, to tell parents what’s age-appropriate for their children,” McNaughton had said after the changes were announced.

Wynne also admits she was surprised when Conservative MPP Rick Nicholls responded to a “joke” by Education Minister Liz Sandals by saying it wasn’t a bad idea to stop teaching evolution in schools.

Nicholls admitted Wednesday that he doesn’t believe in evolution, something Wynne said took her by surprise because she thought every member of the legislature believed in the science that was being taught in Ontario schools.

TORONTO–An Ontario Tory’s statement that he doesn’t believe in evolution has puzzled and frustrated his fellow Conservatives who admitted Wednesday that stance doesn’t help a party trying to rebuild after four consecutive election defeats.

Progressive Conservative Rick Nicholls surprised the legislature Tuesday when he responded to a Liberal taunt by saying opting out of teaching students evolution “was not a bad idea.”

Nicholls’s heckle during debate on an updated sex-education curriculum was greeted with howls from the Liberal and NDP benches and even raised eyebrows among the Conservatives, but he wasn’t backing down Wednesday.

Interim PC leader Jim Wilson insisted Nicholls’s views on evolution were not representative of Ontario Tories, and admitted the outburst “obviously didn’t help” a party in the midst of a leadership race.

“He’s entitled to his opinion, but it’s not shared by the majority of caucus members that I know of,” said Wilson. “It’s the first I’ve ever heard of it actually.”

The Liberals were quick to pounce on Nicholls’s opposition to evolution, using it to deflect from a steady barrage of questions from Tories and New Democrats about allegations of bribery in a recent byelection in Sudbury.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins, responding to an Opposition question about drug funding, used his answer to mock Nicholls for his comments.

“We had one member of the PC party questioning whether we should even be teaching evolution in schools,” said Hoskins. “I can’t even begin to imagine what may be coming next: perhaps we never landed on the moon.”

Nicholls, who represents Chatham-Kent-Essex, insisted he had not received any negative feedback from his caucus colleagues over Tuesday’s outburst about evolution: “No one said anything to me at all.”

But he later issued a release correcting his earlier statement to reporters.

“Steve Clark, house leader for the Official Opposition, spoke to me yesterday on behalf of the PC caucus,” Nicholls said in the statement. “I acknowledge that my comment is not reflective of Ontario PC party policy.”

A stern looking Clark told reporters he had spoken to Nicholls Tuesday.

“What he said yesterday in the house is obviously not party policy,” Clark said. “I met with him and indicated that if I was asked he certainly didn’t profess party policy and he spoke on his own.”

“I don’t agree with the views that were expressed with respect to evolution,” Elliott said after question period.

The two other PC leadership candidates, Barrie MP Patrick Brown and London-area MPP Monte McNaughton, did not respond to questions about whether they believe in evolution. Nicholls is co-chair of Brown’s campaign.

Nicholls’s original outburst about not teaching evolution in schools came during a heated exchange between McNaughton and Education Minister Liz Sandals over the new sex-ed curriculum.

McNaughton’s criticism of Premier Kathleen Wynne, who is gay, was branded as “homophobic” by Sandals. McNaughton accused the Liberals of not consulting enough parents on the new curriculum and fumed about being labelled a homophobe by the Liberals.

TORONTO — Ontario has made progress in combating the scourge of racism and other forms of discrimination but the fight is far from over, the outgoing head of the province’s human rights commission says.

In an interview at commission headquarters, Barbara Hall said she strongly believes the very success of our society depends on ensuring the disadvantaged or marginalized are able to contribute fully.

“The most discouraging part of this work is the persistence of racism, particularly as it impacts black Ontarians and aboriginal people,” said Hall, whose 10 years as chief commissioner ends Friday.

“We see progress on issues but we need to — as a commission, as a society — be vigilant about these issues. It requires constant pushing.”

Discrimination, Hall said, is something that can touch everyone. As examples, she cited women returning from maternity leave to find their jobs have “mysteriously” disappeared or those sexually harassed at work.

During her tenure, the former councillor and three-year mayor of Toronto has overseen a huge internal change — the splitting of the commission in 2008 into a tribunal that deals with individual complaints and the commission, which focuses on systemic and policy issues related to discrimination.

The split made sense, Hall, 68, told The Canadian Press.

“If we have to change society…on the basis of one individual complaint after the other, it would take many lifetimes,” she said.

“Most people who care about the kind of society we live in aren’t prepared to wait that long.”

Looking back over her term, Hall is particularly proud of an initiative that uncovered huge issues — including the “terrifying” stigma people with mental-health problems were facing. Until the commission started asking questions, discrimination against them was “in the closet in the human rights system,” she said.

The response to the initiative was overwhelming, and helped propel Ontario into the forefront of tackling the problem. The mentally ill, she said, learned they have rights.

“We see change in people’s confidence to raise the issues,” Hall said.

The commission, with a budget of $5 million and a staff of about 50 people, was also instrumental in sparking improvement in the way the mentally ill are treated in the province’s jails — in particular avoiding their placement in segregation.

The transgender form another group who have benefited recently from a commission that pushed for changes in the human rights code to ensure their protection, Hall said.

They were, she said, among the most marginalized and most subject to violence — often unknown to much of society.

For now, however, Hall said she is looking forward to enjoying more travel time with her husband Max, who is retiring from his position as head of the National Easter Seals charity.

Nevertheless, the couple have always played some kind of activist role and Hall, who is keenly interested in aboriginal issues, said that won’t change.

“We’re not going away,” she said.

The provincial government has named another commissioner — lawyer Ruth Goba — as interim head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Hall urged her successor not to listen only to the loudest voices but to seek out the truly marginalized.

“Unless we’re able to eliminate discrimination and create a situation where all people are respected, all our lives are diminished.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-must-combat-racism-says-outgoing-human-rights-commissioner/feed/0How to make sex unsexy: Teach ithttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/teitel-on-ontarios-new-sex-ed-curriculum/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/teitel-on-ontarios-new-sex-ed-curriculum/#commentsWed, 25 Feb 2015 12:46:53 +0000Emma Teitelhttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=684183Progressive sex ed may not just be a victory for public health, but for abstinence

If you are a child in an Ontario public school studying sexual education, you are stuck in a time far different than your own. Your sex-ed curriculum, last revised in 1998, reflects a world in which Coldplay is cool, sexting doesn’t exist, and Facebook isn’t even an idea brewing in Mark Zuckerberg’s brain. Your curriculum predates not only every piece of technology you use on a daily basis, but also what is likely your mother’s favourite talk show. Ellen Degeneres, North America’s favourite lesbian, began dancing down the studio aisles of The Ellen Show in 2003—the same year gay marriage became legal in Canada, and Kim Kardashian starred in her career-making sex tape. But your sex-ed curriculum doesn’t reflect these monumental cultural shifts in our society because it is a relic. Until now, that is.

This week, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne unveiled the province’s revamped sex-ed curriculum, one that makes no reference to Kim Kardashian, but includes other topics equally significant to the modern age: sexting,cyberbullying and LGBT issues (namely, that families come in all different shapes and sizes—a fact that even the movie Mrs. Doubtfire tried to embrace in 1993).

The new curriculum, revised in 2010 but shelved by then-premier Dalton McGuinty after a small group of socially conservative parents complained, will be introduced to the province’s schools in September—but not without controversy. The same group of parents and activists who spooked McGuinty staged a modest-sized protest at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Tuesday, chanting slogans and holding signs, one of which read: “What’s next . . . safe animal sex?” (A girl can dream.)

Chief among the things that disturb this group is the early age at which students will learn the facts of life. Kids in Grade 2 will learn about consent, kids in Grade 3 will learn about homosexuality and same-sex marriage (which is to say they will learn that such things exist, not that the Adonis bathhouse in Toronto offers a 30-minute “soft hands” massage). Students in Grade 7 will get the facts on contraception, STDs, and oral and anal sex. Being products of a hypersexual era, they will likely know these things already (and a whole lot more), whether their parents want them to or not; some kids watch porn for the first time when they are 10.

But parents wary about sex ed in Ontario—or parents wary of progressive sex education anywhere in the country—shouldn’t despair at the thought of teachers taking health class into the future. They should rejoice. In fact, they have more reason to rejoice than their socially liberal counterparts, for there is no dissuading voice more powerful when it comes to sex than the voice of an enthusiastic, open-minded authority figure. Kids don’t giggle in health class because they are titillated, but because they are embarrassed. Talking to a teacher about sex, watching him circle the urethra on a giant diagram of a penis, or put a condom on a banana, does not typically make a kid hot and bothered; it makes her cringe.

The saving grace to sex ed in my youth (i.e., the sex ed of today) was that the types of things that did get us hot and bothered—cybersex, web-cam shows, Internet porn—existed entirely outside the classroom. They were covert; they were unknown to parents and teachers alike and, thus, free from awkward school-sanctioned dissection.

When the new sex-ed curriculum rolls out in September, this will cease to be the case in Ontario. Students will not find out about sexting from their friends—or from those sexting them—but from their teachers. In other words, when Susie receives her first explicit text message, she may not be able to shake the memory of Mr. Johnson’s lesson in sex ed about the “the dangers of dick pics.”

This doesn’t mean that cybersex will never be had again, or that kids will stop downloading porn, but that an intensely private world will, for the first time, be made public in a very sterile, cerebral and unsexy place. In the end, then, progressive sex ed may not just be a victory for public health, but for abstinence.

Wynne, who is openly gay, took issue with a comment from Progressive Conservative Monte McNaughton, who has frequently criticized the premier’s “sex-ed agenda.”

“It’s not the premier of Ontario’s job, especially Kathleen Wynne, to tell parents what’s age-appropriate for their children,” McNaughton said Monday following the release of the new document.

Wynne demanded that McNaughton explain why he feels she is not qualified to set education policy.

“Is it that I’m a woman? Is it that I’m a mother? Is it that I have a master’s of education? Is it that I was a school council chair? Is it that I was the minister of education?” Wynne said Tuesday in the legislature.

Education Minister Liz Sandals said after question period that McNaughton has made remarks “that are quite homophobic.”

McNaughton said Wynne’s suggestion that he’s homophobic is “the lowest thing a premier of Ontario could say about any other legislator.”

“When I started back in November questioning the premier on this I was very clear that this is about public consultation, talking to parents across the province, and for this premier to stoop this low is absolutely a shame and absolutely ridiculous,” he said after question period.

Sandals, in question period, suggested McNaughton wouldn’t just “opt out” of sex-ed, but also teaching evolution if he were premier, to which Progressive Conservative Rick Nicholls shouted, “That’s not a bad idea.”

Meanwhile, outside the legislature a few hundred people protested the sex-ed curriculum, with some saying parents were not consulted enough, many complaining about masturbation being mentioned in the Grade 6 curriculum, while a few espoused more extreme viewpoints.

A spokesman for the third remaining candidate in the race, MPP Christine Elliott, said minutes before the rally began that she was due to speak, but Elliott did not end up attending. Her spokesman said “there was a change in plans as Christine had legislative duties to attend to.” She released a statement saying parents were “shut out” of the curriculum consultation.

Progressive Conservative Interim Leader Jim Wilson said any members attending the rally were doing so independently, as part of their leadership bids.

Other speakers at the rally included members of the anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition, the Catholic group Parents As First Educators and several parents. Claudia Rulli, a mother of two, said the curriculum “pushes sex” and called for it to be scrapped entirely.

“In protecting my children, premier, you do not have my consent to teach my children about masturbation, oral and anal sex, and you do not have my consent to teach them about gender identity theory,” she said. “Our message to this government, who wants to manipulate our children into a distorted way of thinking is: Not on our watch.”

The curriculum — last updated in 1998 — brings Ontario in line with other provinces, Sandals said.

By Grade 3, students will learn about same-sex relationships. Children in Grades 4 and up will learn more about the dangers of online bullying, while the dangers of sexting will come in Grade 7. Lessons about puberty will move from Grade 5 to Grade 4, while masturbation and “gender expression” are mentioned in the Grade 6 curriculum.

Vincent Chan, a father of two, said teaching kids proper names for body parts in Grade 1 is good, but some of the lessons, such as masturbation, come too young.

`”I believe that teaching them sex education is important, but teaching them at such a young age is not appropriate,” he said.

Masturbation is included as a “teacher prompt” in the section of Grade 6 curriculum discussing changes that occur during adolescence.

“Exploring one’s body by touching or masturbating is something that many people do and find pleasurable,” the teacher prompt says. “It is common and is not harmful and is one way of learning about your body.”

For the unpronounceable symbol/funk musician Prince, writing the song 1999deep in the neon recesses of the 1980s must have been like writing of an imaginary futuristic tomorrowland. The biggest fear of the time: nuclear proliferation. “Partying like it was 1999″ sounded like a pretty good time, in a pretty cool year. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you / I only want you to have some fun,” he slithers as the track opens—presaging, perhaps hopefully, a looser-limbed, more Dionysian age.

1999 has come and gone, of course, and it wasn’t quite the bacchanalia Prince envisioned. It was more of a way-station year than anything else, before the onset of the new millennium and a decade of New Year’s novelty sunglasses that use the middle zeroes of the year as the lenses. But 1999 was also the year that Ontario’s most recent iteration of its sex-ed curriculum, formally created in 1998, came into effect—the most stunning, galling fact about what is set to consume Ontario’s legislature over the next few months. On Monday, Education Minister Liz Sandals officially unveiled an updated sex-ed curriculum that includes, among other things, teaching of consent at Grade 1 and of masturbating—gasp!—in Grade 6. According to the National Post, the old one waited until Grade 8 to explain, rather direly, the “consequences of engaging in sexual activities”; the old one did not mention the words “sexual orientation,” “homophobia” and “gender identity,” and efforts to merely add them to a glossary of terms for teachers—not even actually including in the curriculum—was spiked when efforts to reform it failed in 2011.

This will, invariably, launch some worthwhile discussions about the role of government in private parenting, where many feel the onus lies in sex education. There will be debates over the marginalization of religious beliefs in our schools. Already, there are social conservative factions spoiling for a fight: A rally is being organized against the new curriculum at Queen’s Park on Tuesday.

But here’s the thing people maybe aren’t quite understanding: The last time Canada’s most populous province had a new sex-ed curriculum was in 1999—making it the oldest one in Canada.

Here’s a short list of things we didn’t have in 1999: We didn’t have YouTube, or even the first iPod, much less Facebook and Twitter and other future boxes like that. In those 16 years, Segways went from the next big thing to the purview of the senile and the lazy. Getting onto a plane was a relative breeze. You couldn’t tap credit cards to make payments; heck, you couldn’t tap anything on your cellphone, other than tapping out a text message—and, if you were lucky, you had the predictive functions of T9 texting, so that you didn’t have to just press the 5 button three times just to type the letter L. USB flash drives didn’t exist. In 1999, a significant chunk of us genuinely feared that computers were going to rain missiles down upon us on New Year’s Day. Never mind the fact that Snapchat and other social media wasn’t around, as Sandals noted—computers as we understand them to work today didn’t exist.

There’s no question that technology has zoomed ahead, and we’ve happily zoomed along with it. On the cellphones each of us has, we carry a cloud bank of personal data, a way to access our friends in seconds, and we have ready access to every song and video in the history of those media. We’ve accepted these vast, unhalting changes, modified our behaviours, and updated and upgraded and improved our lives in every way—except, apparently, in this fundamental, eminently crucial one: teaching our children about sex, an issue that has been here since time immemorial—even before 1999.

It’s not even simply the fact that we should match a digital world that has evolved well past us. It’s the sheer illogic of the fact that teaching—an essentially forward-facing practice—should remain frozen in time. Even take, for instance, the things we’re discussing among Rogers brands as part of Project 97, a dialogue about sexual assault and harassment. It’s drawing engagement and interest, which is great—but it’s also striking, because the dissonance between young people’s sexual proclivities and our understanding of them hasn’t really changed. There’s little truly innovative in what Project 97 is saying, with stories of: sexting and their legal repercussions; horrible harassment in the workplace; terrible on-campus assault; young people who just didn’t know any better. What is innovative is our willingness to talk about it.

Ask any parents to sacrifice their own comfort for their children, and they wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But our discomfort has left our educational and legal systems without any of the answers—answers that adults are supposed to have. Why are we keeping them from our kids? So let’s keep getting uncomfortable—and, most of all, uncomfortable with the fact that 16 years is too long for change. Perhaps the anti-curriculum protesters will take a minute to truly chew on that.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/newsmaker-of-the-day-ontarios-new-sex-ed-curriculum/feed/9Ontario updates its sex education curriculumhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-updates-its-sex-education-curriculum/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-updates-its-sex-education-curriculum/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 16:09:29 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=683399Premier Kathleen Wynne has vowed that the updated curriculum will be in place for the start of the school year in September.

Students in Grade 6 will learn about masturbation and “gender expression,” while kids in Grades 7 and 8 will discuss contraception, anal and oral sex, preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

The changes are contained in a 240-page health and physical education curriculum for Grades 1 to 8 and a 218-page document covering Grades 9 to 12.

The Liberal government backed away from an attempted update of the sex ed curriculum in 2010 after protests by some religious groups.

But Premier Kathleen Wynne has vowed that the updated curriculum will be in place for the start of the school year in September.

The Opposition has complained the government did not consult enough parents before introducing the revised sex ed curriculum, which Wynne has said will not be changed before being implemented.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-updates-its-sex-education-curriculum/feed/0Two Ontario patients being tested for Ebola placed in isolationhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/two-ontario-patients-being-tested-for-ebola-placed-in-isolation/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/two-ontario-patients-being-tested-for-ebola-placed-in-isolation/#commentsWed, 11 Feb 2015 08:54:12 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=678079The London, Ont. hospital has not released the names of the two patients and says there is no impact on patient or visitor activity

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/two-ontario-patients-being-tested-for-ebola-placed-in-isolation/feed/0Measles count in Ontario riseshttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/measles-count-in-ontario-rises/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/measles-count-in-ontario-rises/#commentsThu, 05 Feb 2015 22:14:41 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=675487News of the fifth Toronto case came after health authorities in Ontario's Niagara region disclosed they had found a case, a woman who had never been vaccinated.

OTTAWA–The measles count in Ontario rose Thursday, with health officials in Toronto reporting they found another adult infected with the highly contagious disease.

The infected person had received the recommended two doses of vaccine, said Lenore Bromley, media relations manager for Toronto Public Health. While the measles vaccine is considered highly effective, about five per cent of people who get two doses may not be fully protected.

News of the fifth Toronto case came after health authorities in Ontario’s Niagara region disclosed they had found a case, a woman who had never been vaccinated.

Meanwhile, public health authorities in Quebec’s Lanaudiere health district were awaiting test results on eight suspected measles cases there. The suspected cases are linked to one another and one person is believed to have contracted measles outside the province, spokesperson Pascale Lamy said in an email.

No connections have been discovered among the six Ontario cases, suggesting there are probably undiagnosed illnesses in the Toronto region. And officials acknowledged the current crop of cases may have already sown the seeds for the next one.

“Will we see secondary cases? If I were a betting person, I would say yes,” said Dr. Shelley Deeks, medical director for immunization and vaccine preventable disease for Public Health Ontario.

In the Niagara region, authorities were scheduling public health clinics to offer measles vaccines after confirming their case. The woman, in her early 20s, was hospitalized with complications from measles. She is recovering.

“Our phones have been ringing off the hook,” said Dr. Valerie Jaeger, local medical officer of health, who added that doctors have also been alerted that measles may be spreading locally.

It’s not known how any of the Ontario cases contracted the virus. None had been out of the country recently. But the woman from the Niagara region had been in Toronto twice in late January, when the first four cases in the city were diagnosed.

Jaeger said her region too is bracing for more cases.

“In terms of progression from this case, we would not be out of the woods until Feb. 23,” said Jaeger. “Then we would know whether there had been any person-to-person transmission from this.”

The incubation period _ the time it takes for an exposed person to develop symptoms, is seven to 21 days, though most infections become apparent in 10 to 14 days.

Jaeger said whenever a measles case is found, public health investigates the immunization status of the person’s household contacts. If they have not been vaccinated, they are offered vaccine. If they refuse, they are instructed to isolate themselves until 21 days has passed since their last exposure to the infected person.

Jaeger said the measles vaccination rate for elementary school children in the region is only 85 per cent, which is not high enough to keep the virus from spreading if it makes its way into that population.

It’s estimated that 95 per cent vaccination coverage is needed to maintain herd immunity, the term used to describe the situation in which enough people are vaccinated that the virus can’t continue to spread.

People born before 1970, when measles vaccine use began, are assumed to have previously had the disease. Canada was able to stop domestic spread of the virus in the late 1990s. As a result, any measles cases that occur now are sparked by virus importation, in a returning Canadian or an infected visitor, or spread from the person who imported the virus.

TORONTO – Ontario is promising to introduce legislation to ban the breeding and acquisition of killer whales following a report that recommended an overhaul of rules about marine mammals in captivity.

“The intent of our legislation will be to make sure that we don’t have orcas in captivity in the future,” Yasir Naqvi, Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, said on Tuesday.

“They are unique animals that cannot be replicated in captivity.”

The announcement followed the release of a report the government commissioned in October 2013, when it announced increased power and funding for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (OSPCA).

The 128-page report by David Rosen, a marine biologist with the University of British Columbia, made a number of recommendations, including setting new standards on pool sizes, noise limits around marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and belugas, water quality and appropriate social groupings.

In his report, Rosen criticized the inadequacy of the OSPCA when dealing with marine mammals, which included the lack of specialized training for OSPCA agents. He also noted that the OSPCA Act does not include regulations specifically for marine mammals.

“It is our opinion that the current standards of care for marine mammals in display facilities are insufficient,” the report stated.

Allegations of animal abuse and neglect at Marineland Canada — which has the only killer whale in captivity in Canada — prompted the OSPCA to launch an investigation in 2012. After the eight-month probe, the OSPCA issued six orders that Marineland complied with and the theme park said no evidence of animal abuse was found, media reports said.

Marineland was not immediately available to comment on the latest report on Tuesday.

Other recommendations in the report include:

— Suitable social and environmental enrichment programs at each facility.

— Rules surrounding the handling of marine mammals, including water quality.

In response to the report, the government said Tuesday it is setting up a technical advisory group composed of veterinarians, animal welfare groups, industry, and enforcement partners to help with the implementation and provide advice for the new standards.

The advisory group is expected to report back to the province within six months, but a government spokesman said the new legislation will be introduced this spring.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-promises-legislation-to-ban-sale-breeding-of-orcas/feed/0Gender identity to determine where transgender inmates are placedhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/gender-identity-to-determine-where-ontario-transgender-inmates-are-placed/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/gender-identity-to-determine-where-ontario-transgender-inmates-are-placed/#commentsMon, 26 Jan 2015 21:11:43 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=670507Inmates will be housed according to their self-identified gender and referred to by their chosen name and their preferred pronoun

TORONTO — Transgender inmates in Ontario will now be dealt with based on their own gender identity, not their physical sexual traits, a policy Ontario’s corrections minister is calling the most progressive of its kind in North America.

Previously, inmates were put in institutions based on a person’s “primary sexual characteristics.” Now, they will be housed according to their self-identified gender and referred to by their chosen name rather than their legal name and their preferred pronoun.

“This is the most progressive policy on the treatment of trans inmates in North America,” Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi said Monday. “No other jurisdiction in Canada has such policy. In fact one of the things that I’ll be doing is sending a copy of our policy to all other my colleagues across the country.”

The policy builds on interim guidelines that were put in place last April, Naqvi said.

The case of a trans woman from England who was detained by the Canada Border Services Agency last February pushed the issue to the forefront as she tweeted her experiences before being detained in a men’s facility, despite travelling on a passport identifying her as female.

Avery Edison was eventually transferred to a women’s facility, but filed a human rights complaint about her treatment. She said Monday she couldn’t comment on Ontario’s new policy because her human rights case is ongoing.

Trans advocate Susan Gapka said the new policy is significant because it is “incredibly dehumanizing” for trans people to be treated as anything other than their self-identified gender.

“For the trans community … it has a tremendous negative impact, not only during that moment in time but in our experience with authority, our experience with institutions,” she said. “When we try to patch our lives back together that can really be a barrier to accepting the sources of support that will help us to get through to the next level.”

Trans inmates were previously often put in segregation, but now they will be integrated into the general population whenever possible, Naqvi said.

“Today is about human rights,” he said. “It is about ensuring that trans inmates are given the same protections, the same dignity and the same treatment. It is about respect and dignity for gender identity and gender expression.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/gender-identity-to-determine-where-ontario-transgender-inmates-are-placed/feed/1Conservatives mulling focus on manufacturing sector in budgethttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/conservatives-mulling-focus-on-manufacturing-sector-in-budget/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/conservatives-mulling-focus-on-manufacturing-sector-in-budget/#commentsFri, 23 Jan 2015 10:13:04 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=669347Harper and his ministers have been concentrating much of their energy on industry in Ontario

OTTAWA – The Conservative government is considering a strong focus on the manufacturing sector in the upcoming budget, part of a general shift in attention towards Ontario and its prospective voters.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has faced sharp criticism from the opposition parties that he has ignored Canada’s industrial heartland in favour of the energy sector in his home province.

“While Mr. Harper was busy not caring about manufacturing jobs drying up, his finance minister was telling Ontarians they had ‘no one to blame but themselves,”’ Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said in a speech to caucus earlier this week in London, Ont.

Harper and his ministers have been concentrating much of their energy in the province, whose manufacturers and exporters stand to benefit from the sagging loonie.

Harper also finally agreed to meet with Wynne earlier this month, the first time in more than a year.

“The oil industry isn’t remotely the entire Canadian economy,” Harper said at an event Thursday in St. Catharines, Ont., as he spoke about the impact of plummeting oil prices.

Industry Minister James Moore recently told CBC News that while the government has done much to advance the cause of oil pipelines, its up to the companies involved to deliver.

That’s a different tone than Harper took shortly after he took office, when he told a British audience that Canada was an “energy superpower,” and that oilsands development was akin to building the Great Wall of China or the pyramids. It was a phrase that would emerge again during a 2012 trip to China.

Senior Conservative sources emphasize that manufacturing has always been on the radar – a two-year extension of the temporary capital cost allowance for equipment and machinery appeared in the 2013 budget. Southern Ontario’s auto industry was also given billions in bailout money in late 2008.

But they also suggest that more help for the sector is top of mind as the April budget is being put together. For example, the accelerated capital cost allowance lets companies write-off the cost of machinery more quickly, thereby lowering their tax bill. One option is to make that a permanent measure.

Harper specifically referred to manufacturing this week, when he dismissed the suggestion his government should readjust its economic plan.

The government is already doing plenty to foster economic health, he said, including “cutting red tape, programs to aid the creation of small business and small business jobs, programs to aid in innovation, programs to ensure the manufacturing sector is strong and growing and revitalized, negotiations to open new markets to trade, and keeping our taxes low.”

On Tuesday I spoke to the federal Liberal caucus in London, Ontario on the state of southwestern Ontario’s economy. These sessions take place behind closed doors without media present, but the organizer has graciously given me permission to publish my opening remarks.

Thank you for having me here today. I’m Mike Moffatt, Assistant Professor of Business, Economics and Public Policy at the Ivey Business School, Chief Economist of the Mowat Centre and on Mr. Trudeau’s Economic Council of Advisors.
I’ll start by giving a brief overview of the economic issues of southwestern Ontario and how they relate to the overall Canadian picture.

This region means a great deal to me. I live here in London, a couple blocks from St. Joseph’s Hospital where I was born. My family’s roots in the area extend for generations. My parents met as teenagers when they both lived in a small rural community called Whalen Corners, about a half-hour drive away. The best description I can give you of the place is this: When my grandmother passed away a couple years ago, the entire community of Whalen Corners came to the funeral. They arrived in one car.

Southwestern Ontario is comprised of three regions, each of which has about a million and a half people split between cities, towns and small rural communities like Whalen Corners. These three regions – I’ll call them North, East and West, combined have a population the size of British Columbia’s.

The North region is made up of the area around Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Guelph and Barrie. It has unemployment rate below the national average and a relatively strong economy due to its proximity to Toronto, the strength of the tech sector in Waterloo, and local success stories like Linamar. Their economic issues are not dissimilar to the rest of the country: rising household debts, affordability of childcare and the erosion of blue collar jobs, particularly in Kitchener.

The East region starts in the Hamilton-Burlington area and extends east to Niagara Falls. Their story is of manufacturing job losses offset somewhat by a growing Burlington economy and the reinvention of Hamilton. The east has added 100,000 to its working age population but added only 20,000 full-time jobs. That’s not nearly enough to keep up with a growing population, but it’s something.

The West region, where we’re located, starts in Windsor, follows Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair to London and Sarnia then turns north through Stratford and Bruce County. The 10 parliamentary seats often described as southwestern Ontario, that’s the west region.

Despite significant population increases over the last decade, the number of persons with a full-time job dropped by about 30,000. When you hear about plant closures in southwestern Ontario, it’s typically from this region. GM’s transmission plant in Windsor, Heinz in Leamington, Ford Talbotville, Navistar in Chatham-Kent, Sterling Truck in St. Thomas, Electro-Motive Diesel in London. And so on.

You’ve got two regions, the East and the West, which combined have 3 million people, added about 150,000 working age persons and have 10,000 fewer people working full-time than a decade ago. Outside of a few pockets like Stratford, it’s been a lost decade for an area that has a population halfway between Atlantic Canada’s and Alberta’s.

It’s clear why I care about the fate of London and Whalen Corners, but this issue should concern Canadians from Maple Ridge to Montreal to Moncton. The erosion of the southwestern Ontario’s tax base costs the federal government billions every year. How much different would our conversations be about the government’s ability to fund infrastructure or childcare or tariff reduction if we still had that money?

So how did everything go so terribly wrong?

Southwestern Ontario has always been and will always be an exporting region, which leaves it vulnerable to shifts in the global economy. At the same time our exporters were facing increased competition from emerging powers such as China, they experienced rapidly escalating costs thanks to a Canadian dollar fuelled by rising oil prices.

As an example, 10 years ago, when I wrote the 1st business plan for a company I own, Nexreg Compliance, an exporter of consulting services, we assumed an 86 cent dollar thinking it was a worst-case scenario. Fortunately we were able to adapt to the reality of a Canadian dollar at par thanks to product differentiation and automation. Companies that couldn’t adapt to that reality left or died. The ones that stayed and survived became leaner, meaner and more automated, which ensured their survival but saw them cut jobs, at least in the short-run.

At the same time as these global shifts were taking place, our local exporters were fighting with one arm tied behind their back due to Canada’s deteriorating relationship with key trading partners United States and Mexico, which has caused the thickening of borders and delays in crucial projects such as a new Windsor-Detroit crossing. Even what should be a good news story such as Canada’s trade deal with Korea is bittersweet. Because the Americans were able to complete a deal before we could, Canadian pork exports to Korea fell nearly 70% from 2011 to 2013 as American producers had preferential market access denied to Canadians.

Southwestern Ontario’s recovery will happen through the growth of innovative local companies that can compete and thrive on world markets. In order for that to happen, we need to remove the bottlenecks that deter their growth. At a big picture level, here are five ways of doing so:

Repairing our relationship with our NAFTA partners. This must include the US but also Mexico which is vitally important in continent-wide supply chain. The visa issue is an ongoing irritation that needs to be addressed.

Just-in-time business models require products be delivered in a consistent time-frame. This necessitates addressing gridlock in the GTA as well as streamlining border crossings near Sarnia, Windsor and Niagara Falls.

In the 21st century, data is both a production input and product sold by entrepreneurs. We need to ensure that all companies in the region have the ability to access high-speed broadband networks. President Obama has indicated this as a priority for his country, we must do the same here.

Many of the business models that places such as Chatham-Kent and Woodstock are relying on for economic growth require residents to travel all over the world to meet customers, suppliers and sources of capital. They need to be able to quickly and cost-effectively travel to Atlanta, Boston, Calgary and Dallas. This can be accomplished through expansion of regional airports and increasing transportation links to Pearson Airport.

My time should just about be up. Again, thank you for having me. I look forward to your questions.

OTTAWA – Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has proposed a sweeping, multi-billion-dollar national infrastructure partnership between the provinces and the federal government, despite growing concerns about the impact of falling oil prices on Ottawa’s bottom line.

In speech Tuesday to a Canada 2020 luncheon, Wynne said the so-called Canadian Infrastructure Partnership would be a collaboration aimed at investing five per cent of GDP in infrastructure renewal — almost $100 billion a year.

She said experts estimate that governments in Canada currently invest between three and 3.5 per cent of GDP in public infrastructure.

“We are not asking the federal government to do it all,” Wynne said. “We are asking the federal government to do more.”

“Our government has delivered unprecedented investment in Ontario’s infrastructure — from new subway expansion, to renovated roads to improved public transit … Ontario has received over $12 billion in infrastructure funding,” he said in a statement.

The Conservative government has announced a 10-year, $53-billion plan to build critical infrastructure, including roads, bridges and commuter rail systems.

Wynne said Tuesday those investments were welcome, but suggested they don’t go far enough.

“Even when you account for federal spending on its own infrastructure assets in Ontario and the money it transfers directly to municipalities, the province of Ontario currently still invests three times as much as the federal government in public infrastructure in the province,” she said.

“Despite this, the federal government receives almost an equal share of the revenue generated from these investments. This disparity is a detriment to the Canadian economy as a whole.”

Speaking to reporters after her speech, Wynne denied she expects too much from the federal government in the midst of plummeting oil prices, noting Ottawa and the provinces and territories are all grappling with a changing economy.

“The federal government still has the capacity to engage in this conversation with us. They are still on the verge of surpluses,” she said.

“I see this as the right moment, whether it’s because of low interest rates or because of the economic realities that we’re dealing with — this is the moment that we actually need to foster this growth if we’re going to be successful in the future.”

She called on all federal leaders, including Liberal Justin Trudeau, to step up on infrastructure.

“Tell us what you will do to help Canada catch up and ultimately take the lead when it comes to the kind of infrastructure that is essential for our economic competitiveness,” she said in her speech.

The premier pointed to major projects of the past — including the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Trans-Canada Highway — that transformed the country and put thousands to work.

“I do not need to dwell on the state of infrastructure across our country today,” Wynne said. “We all know the reality.”

She called for “large-scale, sustained, co-ordinated and strategically wise” infrastructure investments that would advance economic competitiveness for decades.

The premier’s proposal comes ahead of a premiers’ meeting in Ottawa next week.

Wynne recently invited Prime Minister Stephen Harper to attend the meeting after the two met on Jan. 5 for the first time in more than a year. The Prime Minister’s Office has said Harper won’t attend, saying he meets regularly with the provincial premiers one-on-one.

NDP industry critic Peggy Nash said Wynne’s proposals underscore the need for Harper to be at the meeting.

“This is exactly why the prime minister needs to attend next week’s meeting with the premiers to talk with provinces on infrastructure, health care, affordable child care and job losses in the manufacturing sector,” she said.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-premier-kathleen-wynne-proposes-national-infrastructure-partnership/feed/7Why Trudeau and Harper are singing the praises of Ontari-ari-ariohttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/why-trudeau-and-harper-are-singing-the-praises-of-ontari-ari-ario/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/why-trudeau-and-harper-are-singing-the-praises-of-ontari-ari-ario/#commentsThu, 08 Jan 2015 11:31:25 +0000Paul Wellshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=661045Justin Trudeau will hold winter meetings there. Stephen Harper made a series of Ontario-centric moves. And it's all because of the impending election.

Stephen Harper set a crisp tempo in his first days back on the job after Christmas break. On Monday, the Prime Minister demoted Julian Fantino from his post as veterans affairs minister and met with Kathleen Wynne, whom Harper dislikes but who is Ontario’s premier. On Tuesday, he shook up the senior ranks of the bureaucracy. Now the senior ranks tend to shake now and then, and you need take no note if your own career isn’t involved. But for the rest of it, the PM was making it even clearer that an election is coming.

Fantino was not well-loved by veterans’ organizations, a constituency the Prime Minister’s Office actually doesn’t worry much about: The Conservatives draw a distinction between veterans’ organizations, which are never satisfied with this government, and veterans themselves, who sometimes can be. But Fantino’s lousy bedside manner was becoming a broader stain on the government’s reputation. He has landed gently, in a junior Defence portfolio, where he will not have to interact with actual people who have problems. His replacement is Erin O’Toole, an impressive young MP from a riding 90 minutes’ drive northeast of Toronto. O’Toole used to fly in Sea King helicopters for the Navy, so he knows a thing or two about choppy waters, and he had already been working hard on veterans’ issues before his promotion.

Wynne survived the federal Conservatives’ ﬁtful attempts to trip her up during the Ontario provincial election year of 2014, so Harper must make nice with her during the federal election year of 2015. Well, minimally nice; not overtly hostile.

If a thread connects all this activity—Fantino’s soft landing, O’Toole’s promotion, Wynne’s partial gratification—it is Ontario, where all these characters live and work. There’s a reason why my Big Book of Columnists’ Clichés automatically falls open to the page marked Vote-Rich Ontario: Its 121 seats in the next election will be more than a third of all the seats in Canada, and all three big national parties look competitive across much of that expanse.

Which explains why Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberal caucus will hold their winter strategy session in late January in London, Ont. After that meeting wraps, Trudeau will wander through southwestern Ontario for a few days, test-driving early drafts of campaign speeches in front of assorted crowds. In politics, it’s always wise to watch a politician’s feet, as well as his mouth. Trudeau’s feet will be in vote-rich Ontario—see how trippingly it comes off the tongue?—for a reason.

The Liberals did 15,000 telephone interviews in late autumn with whomever would pick up the phone and talk to a telemarketer, in an ambitious attempt to identify what one of Trudeau’s helpers called “market opportunities” as an election approaches. Those opportunities are demographic—income brackets, family configurations, job types that might correspond with an increased likelihood of voting Liberal—and geographic. This source professed great hope for his party in the urban West and francophone Quebec, but probably only over “the long term”—a phrase I hadn’t heard a Liberal pronounce in ages. In the near term, which means this election cycle, realism and precedent dictate that if market opportunities appear in Calgary and, say, Hamilton, the Liberals will work harder to lock Hamilton down.

Trudeau ran for the leadership with a promise to “build the team and build the plan.” The plan has been vague to date, but if Harper ever looks like he might call an election earlier than the October date theoretically fixed in law, Trudeau will announce a significant part of his economic platform, to compete with Harper for attention or to dissuade him from an early election.

But there will probably be no need. The Liberals and New Democrats I talk to don’t really believe there will be an early election. “They’ve got $40 million to spend,” my Liberal source said of his Conservative foes, who are still winning each quarter’s fundraising competition. “They can only spend $25 or $26 million in a writ,” that is, during a formal campaign period, because Elections Canada monitors these things closely. “Why would they go now?”

Why indeed. If Harper waits until autumn to launch the battle, summer “won’t be much of a summer. I mean, nobody will take a vacation. Everybody will basically be campaigning until the official campaign begins.”

Trudeau’s opponents are itching for a shot at him. The entertaining rumour is that Harper and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair would like a lot of televised leaders’ debates, the better to lay out acres of banana peel for the new kid to slip on. If Trudeau finishes the way his party’s last two leaders did, it will be bad for Liberals. On election day in 2011, there was a 14-point gap between Ontario voter support for the government of the premier of the day, Dalton McGuinty, and support for the federal Liberals of Michael Ignatieff. Exit Ignatieff.

Trudeau’s Liberal credentials are more solid, in theory. He should be able to pull the Liberal vote, in theory. This is the year theory meets practice. This corner offers no predictions. But expect a lot of Trudeau in Ontario.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/why-trudeau-and-harper-are-singing-the-praises-of-ontari-ari-ario/feed/3Not in their shoes: The problem with value-for-money auditshttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/not-in-their-shoes-the-problem-with-value-for-money-audits/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/not-in-their-shoes-the-problem-with-value-for-money-audits/#commentsMon, 05 Jan 2015 21:18:13 +0000Paul Boothehttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=659989Paul Boothe on the case of Infrastructure Ontario, and why the main flaw of the Ontario Auditor General's report was its creeping subjectivity

Another auditor general (AG)’s report was grabbing headlines last month. It’s a common refrain: billions wasted by incompetent bureaucrats. Reporters gobble it up. Opposition politicians express outrage. Citizens’ trust in the government suffers another blow.

Yet when one digs deeper, the story is more nuanced. The headline number quoted in the AG’s press release may be subject to interpretation. It may represent only one (sensational) side of the story. Worse yet, the report may be substituting the judgment of auditors, who are not required to demonstrate either management or operational experience, for the judgment of the professional managers running the organization.

It’s no accident that private sector business owners rarely turn to their auditors to run the business. Auditors are trained to provide assurance that firms are presenting their financial results in a fair and complete way. No one expects auditors to comment on how to negotiate a contract, hire a CEO, or launch a new product. Business owners know that auditors are not competent to do these things. Rather, they rely on professional managers to run the business.

Exactly the opposite occurs in the public sector. Auditors general spend relatively little of their time in their original role of providing assurance about the fairness and completeness of the government’s financial results. Rather, they are preoccupied with second-guessing the decisions of professional managers. Much of their criticism focuses on how decisions are documented, not whether they are good or bad. Unfortunately, not following the auditor’s preferred documentation process is equated with making a bad decision, which, in turn, can generate a “wasted billions” headline.

This is not to say that value for money is unimportant when taxpayer dollars are being spent in the public interest. It is a key responsibility of public servants. But to assess the substantive results achieved by government programs and how they measure up against targets requires subject matter and management expertise that auditor general staffs rarely possess.

The Ontario auditor general’s recent report on Infrastructure Ontario is a case in point. Governments have a long record of cost overruns and project delays when they manage major construction projects. These cost overruns and delays represent risks to taxpayers. In part, Infrastructure Ontario was established to examine public sector infrastructure projects and make recommendations on whether they should be executed by private sector firms. Contracts are structured so the private sector bears the bulk of the risk of cost overruns and delays. Not all infrastructure projects should be delivered by the private sector. However, when all factors are considered, including the risk of costs overruns and delays, sometimes the private sector provides better value to taxpayers.

Transferring these risks from the public sector to the private sector comes at a price, just as risk is priced in contracts between two private sector entities. However, private sector firms that specialize in construction may be able to manage the risks at a lower cost because of their expertise. It therefore may make sense for governments to pay the private sector to manage the risks, rather than have them managed by public servants.

It is here that Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk falters badly. In the news release accompanying her report, she claims that Ontario paid almost $8 billion more for projects delivered by the private sector, compared with the estimated cost if projects have been delivered by the public sector. She admits that Infrastructure Ontario argued that this cost was more than offset by the value of the risks transferred from the public sector to the private sector, but neglects to mention their estimate in her news release. In fact, the estimated value of the risks avoided by the public sector was $14 billion, for a net saving to taxpayers of about $6 billion.

Lysyk told reporters at Queen’s Park: “If the public sector could manage projects successfully, on time and on budget, there is taxpayer money to be saved.” In other words, if there were no risks, it wouldn’t make sense to pay a private firm to manage them at lower cost. Agreed. However, wishing won’t make the risks of cost overruns and delays go away. In addition, it won’t give public servants the expertise and incentives to manage projects in the way the private sector does.

We teach business students that it is good management practice to focus on your core business and look for outside experts to deliver the non-core services you need. Infrastructure Ontario is recognized internationally for on-time, on-budget delivery of public infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships. Focusing on its core business is a good strategy for government. It might also be for Ontario’s auditor general.

Paul Boothe is Professor and Director of the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management at Western’s Ivey Business School.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/not-in-their-shoes-the-problem-with-value-for-money-audits/feed/1Ontario is number one. God help us.http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/ontarios-number-one-god-help-us/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/ontarios-number-one-god-help-us/#commentsFri, 02 Jan 2015 17:44:12 +0000Jason Kirbyhttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=658139Jason Kirby on what it means now that Ontario is Canada’s fastest-growing economy

For years now, Canada’s economy has lurched forward like a man with one strong leg to pull him ahead and one gimp limb dragging behind. (Zero points for correctly guessing which is Alberta and which is Ontario). Collectively, we’ve managed a pretty decent clip, though it hasn’t exactly been hard to stand out from the pack, especially when our economic frenemy to the south had its shoelaces tied together most of that time. But all that is changing, thanks to a bunch of fracking hooligans who just kneecapped our good leg, too.

The surge in oil production from unconventional oil fields in the U.S.—a trend that has been under way for years but only seemed to catch the attention of energy markets this fall—has sent oil prices skidding. And where oil goes, traditionally, so goes Alberta’s economy. With crude weakening, TD Economics revised its provincial forecasts and now expects Ontario to lead the country with the fastest rate of real GDP growth in 2015—2.6 per cent in Ontario compared to just 2.3 per cent for Alberta. (By comparison, TD expects the final tally for Alberta’s growth in 2014 to be 3.8 per cent.)

God help us. Not since 2002 has Ontario, once Canada’s undisputed economic engine, led Alberta in growth. So it’s good to know what we can expect from the province that is going to carry Canada’s economy forward for at least the next year—and, depending on what happens with energy prices, possibly longer.

Let’s start with the ugly before moving to the extra ugly. Last month, Ontario’s auditor general warned that by 2017-18, the province’s net debt will top $325 billion, double where it was just before the 2008 recession. (In late December, the debt-rating agency Fitch downgraded Ontario’s credit rating from AA to AA-). The Ontario Liberals have vowed that by 2018, they will have eliminated the province’s $12.5-billion deficit and be well on the way to cutting its debt burden, but there are so many strings attached to that promise, it’s hardly worth considering.

Ontario’s abysmal demographic picture will only make matters worse. In the last decade, the number of Ontarians aged 24 and under has flatlined, while over the same period, the population of those aged 55 and up has jumped 37 per cent. Sometime in 2015, that older group of workers, well on their way to retirement or already in their golden years, will surpass the number of young people in Ontario for the first time ever. Ontario has already been a net exporter of people to other provinces for 11 straight years. It’s hard to see that flow reversing in short order. Taken together, these trends will restrict government tax revenue and make it all the more difficult to fix Ontario’s fiscal crisis.

Now, if Premier Kathleen Wynne had a bold plan on the table to right Ontario’s economy, one could at least see a way out of the morass. No such luck. The government’s strategy has instead been a hodgepodge of hope, pray, and blame Ottawa. Having spent weeks complaining that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was refusing to meet with her, Wynne most recently suggested Harper might have a “vendetta” against Ontario—even as the federal Department of Finance revealed the province will get an additional $1.25 billion in transfer payments in 2015, bringing its total haul from the federal government to $20.4 billion next year, the most of any province. Apparently, whining pays.

There really is only one thing Wynne can do to put Ontario back on a self-sustaining path, and that’s give entrepreneurs and business leaders a reason to operate and expand in the province. It’s an outrage that Ontario hasn’t spawned a single new company of great international significance in years, certainly nothing close to the scale of BlackBerry in its glory days. That has to change, if Ontario has any hope of luring workers from other provinces and countries to live there.

What that doesn’t entail is throwing billions of dollars in bribe money at a few select companies for job-creation publicity stunts. Nor does it mean Ontario should keep funnelling taxpayer money into the pockets of the automakers in a desperate ploy to keep low-grade factory-line jobs from shifting out of the country. The ingredients are actually quite simple, in fact: Create a stable, low-cost environment with attractive tax rates and some measure of certainty that those rates are not going to keep going up.

No one should hold their breath. During last June’s provincial election, Ontarians rebuffed the small-government vision clumsily sketched out by the Tim Hudak Conservatives, and instead gave Wynne a resounding mandate to forge ahead with her idea for an Ontario pension plan. So be it. But while details are still fuzzy, the plan will impose new payroll taxes on those businesses that don’t already offer a workplace pension plan the government deems satisfactory. In short: bigger government and higher taxes. No wonder the Wynne government has to pay companies to move to Ontario.

No question, there are forces working in the province’s favour. The lower dollar and cheaper oil will help those manufacturers that haven’t already closed up shop and left. And Ontario will benefit as U.S. growth kicks into a higher gear. But with so many self-inflicted wounds, Ontario is years away from providing Canada with the kind of economic lift Alberta provided over the last decade. It will be a marvel if we don’t fall on our faces.

More on the sometimes-comic spat that pits Stephen Harper against Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. The other day the Prime Minister went to Toronto, where Wynne works, and met with John Tory, who once ran for premier and has lately fetched up as Toronto’s new mayor. This is the sort of development that elevates farce to the level of art. Wynne decided weeks ago to turn Harper’s refusal to meet her into theatre. Harper wants to play too.

As the column I linked above suggests, my preference is that he take the damned meeting, but I’m more interested in examining motive than in picking heroes and villains. Hers is obvious: Her long-shot re-election campaign last spring, saddled with lousy fiscal results, a slumbering economy and the gas-plant cancellation scandal, turned into sweeping victory after Wynne started feuding with Harper over pensions. (Tim Hudak helped the Liberals, but Wynne’s entourage is quite sure the dispute over an Ontario-made pension scheme was great help to them.)

Harper, too, is clearly motivated, in ways that predate Wynne. Harper walked out of a 2006 meeting with her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, and went straight to a campaign event a few blocks away for Tory, who was then the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives. He went to Rob Ford’s mom’s backyard in 2011 to campaign for Tim Hudak, Tory’s equally hapless successor.

Make no mistake, this Ontario thing is a unique behavioural tic of his. Harper has never appeared with a Quebec Liberal (or ADQ or CAQ) leader and called for their election, even back when that might have helped them. I can find no record of his meeting with any Vancouver mayor; while he has surely met a Vancouver mayor, he has never done it in the charged context of his meetings with Tory and Ford. And while he did sit next to Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre at the Jean Béliveau funeral, that was about hockey, not politics. Harper stayed out of the Conservative-vs.-Wildrose electoral confrontation in the province he represents in the Commons. But he has explicitly endorsed the Conservative at every Ontario election since he became Prime Minister. In the constant work of discrediting Ontario Liberal governments, Harper cabinet ministers are expected to pitch in. In 2007 Peter Van Loan called McGuinty “the small man of Confederation.” In 2008 Jim Flaherty called Ontario “the last place” anyone would want to invest.

Harper would not have governed the way McGuinty did, and certainly not the way Wynne has. But he was brooding over politics in Ontario before either of them were around to annoy him. In 2000 the Canadian Alliance, led by Stockwell Day, lost the only federal election it would ever contest under that name and leader. Harper had publicly predicted the Alliance wouldn’t do well, but the predicted result still made him furious. The object of his anger was “eastern Canada” — basically, Ontario.

Eleven days after the election, the National Post published a bitter column from Harper. Sure, the Alliance had no clear strategy, policy or tactics, Harper admitted, and yet he clamed “this had little if anything to do with the election result.” The real fault lay with the Reform movement’s “rejection by the very electorate that, in creating the Canadian Alliance, it had twisted itself into a pretzel to please.” Which electorate? “Eastern Canada,” which “appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status.”

This article, which is familiar to most students of the Harper canon, ends like this: “The rest of the country has responded by telling us in no uncertain terms that we do not share their ‘Canadian values.’ Fine. Let us build a society on Alberta values.”

Most accounts of Harper’s formative writing follow up with a description of the “Firewall Letter,” full of advice for Ralph Klein, signed by Harper and five others and published in the Post six weeks later. But I’m struck by yet another article, much less noticed at the time or remembered since, which the Post published on May 23, 2001.

This one was signed by Harper and Ken Boessenkool, and its thesis was that conservatives could pretty much ignore what was happening in Ottawa because “an emerging political re-alignment in Canada’s provinces … will fundamentally reshape the country within the emerging global economy.” Fun! Who was involved? “The emerging consensus in Queen’s Park, the views of the new government in British Columbia and the historical forces for greater provincial autonomy in Alberta and Quebec will align and successfully challenge Ottawa’s hegemony,” Harper and Boessenkool wrote.

Alberta and Quebec (whose premier at the time of the article was Bernard Landry) are familiar. The new B.C. government was Gordon Campbell’s broad coalition of Liberals and former Social Credit supporters. And Queen’s Park? “We are witnessing a return of Ontario to its deep history of autonomy and resistance to federal domination,” the authors wrote. Their article appeared within weeks of the publication of John Ibbitson’s book Loyal No More, which made the same argument.

The Ontario hero in Harper and Boessenkool’s argument was Oliver Mowat, who as premier from 1872 to 1896 “used every tool at his disposal — pure power politics, legislation, and the British Privy Council — to wrest control away from Ottawa.” But then a “spirit of compliance” took over. “The seeds were sown by Leslie Frost; they blossomed under Bill Davis, who sacrificed Ontario’s interests to Pierre Trudeau’s; and they reached their disastrous apex under David Peterson.”

Now, at last, Queen’s Park was returning to a “spirit of independence,” beginning with Bob Rae’s (!) “‘fair share’ debate over unilateral cuts to federal transfer payments” (!) and continuing with Mike Harris’s declaration that he would, in Harper and Boessenkool’s wording, “do what is right on health care” no matter what Roy Romanow might recommend.

With Campbell’s B.C. adding its force to this discourse, and Alberta and Quebec agreeing as they always had, it wouldn’t matter what Chrétien thought, the authors wrote. “This alignment will be successful because not even Jean Chrétien can withstand a coalition that includes Ontario, never mind one that includes both Ontario and Quebec.”

You start to see Harper’s irritation with an Ontario government that is often portrayed as being allied with a new Quebec government and which, in style and philosophy, is far closer to David Peterson and Jean Chrétien than to Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, or Stephen Harper. It is a longstanding (and perfectly reasonable) belief of Western conservatives that divergent philosophies held in Ottawa and Queen’s Park dilute the effectiveness of one government, if not both. I remember a Preston Manning news conference, perhaps 15 years ago, at which he argued that since Mike Harris felt one way about some issues and Jean Chrétien felt another, Chrétien should smarten up. Manning used to throw the odd Hail Mary pass like that.

Harper, it turns out, is more fond of spirits of independence at Queen’s Park when they are expressing independence from Liberal governments in Ottawa. And because populations can be led, as Harper has shown over eight years, it’s a big problem for him when Ontario’s population is led, both in terms of legislation and of attitude, away from his ideas. Ontario is still a bigger fact than almost any in Confederation; in the 2000 election, where the “rejection” of Alliance ideas by “Eastern Canada” led Harper to draw his ink from a bitter well, the Alliance won a quarter of a million more votes in Ontario than in Alberta. The formative Canadian political event in the lives of most federal Conservative staffers over 35 (and there are some!) was Harris’s Common Sense Revolution. Ontario is a formidable bastion of Conservative voters, Conservative ideas and Conservative staff talent for a generation after the election of a Conservative government. But because it is not a sure source of any of those things — because it is often tempted by another path — it preoccupies Harper the way the prodigal son preoccupies the father in Luke.

The purest expression of this is the amazing transfer-payment two-step Harper executed in 2013-14 and, we learned today, 2014-15. Despite the best work of the Parliamentary Budget Office, it’s not widely understood what a swift kick, aimed squarely at Ontario’s finances, the federal government administered a year ago. A longstanding rule to the effect that no province can receive less from all federal transfers in one year than it received the year before. The Harper government suspended that rule for Ontario for the year now ending, at a cost of $1.2 billion to Ontario.

2014 was, you’ll recall, an election year in Ontario. Deficits are a chronic problem there. Ensuring that Wynne’s government would face $1.2 billion more of a problem than if the rules had simply been applied the way they’d always been applied before was a pretty good trick for tripping Wynne up. It didn’t work. This year it’s Harper who has to face voters, so Joe Oliver was out early spreading word that Ontario’s transfers will grow markedly, the way they do when a one-time accounting trick no longer applies. The fight to ensure Ontario finds its way to the proper quadrant of the Liberal-Conservative, independence-compliance grid — ideally, Conservative and compliant — can await Harper’s re-election. If he wins that, he will get back to the work of his lifetime. Harper is, as you’ll recall, a son of Ontario. You can leave, but it never leaves you.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/stephen-harper-ontarian/feed/10Federal government to hike next year’s transfers to Ontario by $1.25Bhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/federal-government-to-hike-next-years-transfers-to-ontario-by-1-25b/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/federal-government-to-hike-next-years-transfers-to-ontario-by-1-25b/#commentsMon, 15 Dec 2014 20:56:14 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=653177Ontario Liberals had complained that the federal government shortchanged the province in 2014-15 when it tweaked the transfer calculations

TORONTO — Ontario will receive an additional $1.25 billion from the federal government next year, following a concerted campaign by the premier to get Ottawa to hand over more money in transfers.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and her finance minister had complained that the federal government shortchanged the province in 2014-15 by $640 million when it unilaterally tweaked the transfer calculations.

Wynne said Monday she was “very pleased” that Ottawa listened to Ontario’s concerns.

“Last year we were blindsided by a reduction that we had not expected and this year it seems as though there has been some movement,” she said.

Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver said the province will receive more than $20.4 billion in transfers in 2015-16 — the most of any province.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa sent a letter to Oliver last week saying Ottawa’s changes to transfer payments put Ontario’s plan to eliminate its $12.5-billion deficit by 2017-18 at risk.

“Each year since the global recession, you ensured that provinces experiencing year-over-year declines in major transfers were made whole through protection payments,” Sousa wrote.

“This year, as Ontario was the only province to experience a decline in transfers, your government eliminated protection payments altogether, leaving Ontarians at a disadvantage.”

Sousa said Ottawa’s latest transfer figures for next year now put Ontario where it should be.

Wynne made oft-repeated criticisms of the federal government during the spring election campaign that saw her win a Liberal majority, including accusing Ottawa of balancing its books on the backs of the people of Ontario by cutting transfer payments for health and social spending.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/federal-government-to-hike-next-years-transfers-to-ontario-by-1-25b/feed/15Boomers: Do as I say, not as I didhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/boomers-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-did/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/boomers-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-did/#commentsSun, 07 Dec 2014 10:59:39 +0000Emma Teitelhttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=647045On Jan. 1, smoking will no longer be permitted on restaurant and bar patios in Ontario. Emma Teitel asks: why not ban porn and poutine, instead?

There’s something personally ominous about the nanny-state inhalation legislation that informs most governmental smoking edicts these days, and that is its unspoken target. Namely, me. At least, me, and young people in general. Consider three changes coming to Ontario’s smoke-free legislation: 1) On Jan. 1, smoking will no longer be permitted on restaurant and bar patios. In other words, the Ontario Liberals have ruined summertime for the young and the restless; gone are the days of afternoon patio drinks and smokes. 2) Gone, too, are the days of buying a pack after Psychology 101: The act will prohibit the sale of tobacco on university and college campuses. 3) The only cigarette that my demographic could reasonably claim for its own, the digital smoke, is under all-out assault: The government has introduced legislation that will ban the smoking of e-cigarettes indoors, even though there is no scientific evidence that “vaping” is nearly as harmful or invasive as traditional smoking. Finally, the sale of mentholated and flavoured cigarettes is to be abolished outright, ostensibly to protect even younger kids, who like their tobacco with a fruity, minty kick.

Let’s forget the argument about whether or not bans work. The state has no place in the ashtrays of the nation—particularly, when those ashtrays are outdoors, where there is more than enough clean air for those who can’t bear to stand or sit next to smokers. And let’s take on the more inconvenient truth: Guess who the nannies are? Boomers. Then, guess who the kids are. Millennials.

This is one curious equation. I mean, it might have been predictable that Boomers weaned on ’60s social activism and permissiveness would eventually trade in their idealism for consumerism, but that they’d trade the permissive part for puritanism is a bit of a wild card. Yet, this is exactly what’s happened. The things our parents had fun doing when they were our age are the things they don’t want us to do now. This might be the way of the world, but it’s extremely annoying, not to mention arbitrary. Anti-smoking legislation is enacted, the argument goes, “in our best interest,” because tobacco is responsible for 13,000 deaths in Ontario every year, smoking-related illnesses are a senseless strain on the health care system, and bans of this nature are statistically proven to curb deleterious cultural norms. But there are other cultural norms the Ontario government seems to have forgotten about—Frosh Week, for one. Every September, while their post-secondary progeny are donning puke suits in preparation for alcohol-binging at administration-endorsed beer fests, Boomer parents can now rest assured that at least their adult children won’t be lighting up at the same time. What a relief. Then, there’s that other bogeyman, otherwise known as sex. The Ontario sex-education curriculum is probably the most outdated in the country, but our nannies don’t mind that 11-year-olds are watching porn before they see a diagram of the reproductive system in school, because there are people smoking menthols and eating nachos at the same time.

I’m advocating that, as Millennials, we embrace the nanny state once and for all. In fact, I don’t think the laws go far enough. If the public lacks the willpower to make changes that benefit its health and ease the strain on the medical system, why stop at smoking? During the winter months, I often gain weight, and obesity, we know, can lead to death. For the sake of my expanding sides, rather than merely posting calorie counts, I implore the government to ban poutine—something I usually indulge in after a night of dancing at an electronic-dance music show, where my peers are known to indulge in all manner of illicit activities. If the Ontario Liberals, our parents in absentia, really cared about Millennials, they would establish an embargo on deep-fried dishes from Quebec, institute a province-wide curfew, and ban techno remixes of Lorde songs. But it appears that some sins—at least for now—are still sacred.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/boomers-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-did/feed/12It’s time for Ontario to break its auto habithttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/ontario-needs-to-break-its-auto-habit/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/ontario-needs-to-break-its-auto-habit/#commentsFri, 05 Dec 2014 10:30:54 +0000Jason Kirbyhttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=647031Governments have taken to subsidizing carmakers in a wage race to the bottom

It would be reassuring to say Canadians were shocked, shocked,to learn Ottawa still doesn’t have a complete picture of what was gained, and lost, in the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors five years ago. But after decades of watching the federal and Ontario governments lavish billions in handouts to car companies in return for empty promises, can anyone really say they were surprised?

In case you missed it, here’s just a snippet from the Nov. 25 report by Canada’s auditor general into the rescue effort: “We found it impossible to gain a complete picture of the assistance provided, the difference the assistance made to the viability of the companies, and the amounts recovered and lost.” All told, Ottawa and Ontario doled out $14 billion alongside Washington to keep the automakers afloat. Yet to date, the AG’s office says, the two levels of government have recovered just $5.5 billion of that crisis lifeline.

But this is the auto sector we’re talking about, which means there’s always a fresh crisis that demands action. And action, in automaker parlance, means more government “investment.” So, surprise, surprise, the day before the auditor general’s report was released, the Canadian Automotive Partnership Council, an alliance (one might say an unholy one) of industry, unions and politicians, met with federal Industry Minister James Moore and Ontario Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid with a message and a plan. The message, according to the Globe and Mail: “Canada and Ontario have demonstrated an ability to work together when the stakes are high and the urgency is real [such as the 2009 bailouts]. Today . . . the stakes are high and the urgency is real.” The proposal: an automotive investment board to advise the government on auto policy. I’ll save you the suspense of wondering what the board’s first recommendation would be: Let the taxpayer money flow.

There’s no question Ontario’s auto sector is in crisis. Mexico is eating our lunch when it comes to luring auto-production facilities. So too is the U.S. deep south. In both places wages are far lower than in Windsor, Oshawa or Oakville. Yet the mindset that Ontario cannot survive without the auto industry is so entrenched, and the influence of the industry lobby so great, that governments have, in effect, taken to subsidizing carmakers in a wage race to the bottom. When Ottawa and Queen’s Park gave Ford $142 million as part of an investment that will add 1,000 hourly jobs at its Oakville assembly plant, the deal involved new hires taking a wage cut.

In a recent post on the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blog, Stephen Gordon, a Université Laval economics professor, crunched the numbers and found governments are paying Ford “to cover the cost of hiring people to work for sub-median wages for almost four years.” Gordon, who also writes at Macleans.ca, argued that Ontario is in the grips of what he calls a “manufacturing trap”—a jab at the concept that Canada’s economy is too reliant on the energy sector and suffers from a “staples (or resource) trap.” “Policy-makers have bet so much on the manufacturing sector for so long that they simply cannot think of anything else to do but to double down.”

The smarter approach would be for Ontario to end the bailout-and-bust cycle of its auto sector altogether. Going cold turkey by completely cutting off government support for automakers might please free-market thinkers, but it’s a political non-starter. As it happens, though, Mike Moffatt, an economist at the Western University’s Ivey Business School, has sketched out what a “controlled exit” might look like. In a post at Macleans.ca earlier this year, he argued that the key is to steer young workers away from assembly-line jobs in the auto sector in the first place, before they become locked into a skill set that will be useless should the plant ever close. His “tongue-in-cheek” solution would see any government handout to the auto sector be matched by an industry promise that none of the money go to hire anyone under the age of 45. Since that’s neither feasible or constitutional, government investments should at least take the form of wage subsidies that only apply to auto workers with at least 15 years of experience.

It would have the same effect of weaning the province off automotive jobs while protecting existing older workers. It would also mean that at some point a generation or so in the future, when an auto exec threatens to steer production to Mexico, politicians will be in a better position to say: “Go ahead.”

Let’s face it. Low-grade assembly-line manufacturing in Ontario is going the way of labour-intensive agriculture. Rather than engage in the equivalent of subsidizing horses and ploughs, Ontario should create the conditions for businesses to thrive and invest in more productive, higher-value manufacturing and services.

Picking winners and losers in industry has always been a failed strategy. Time to face the facts: the auto sector is a loser.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/ontario-needs-to-break-its-auto-habit/feed/1In the Wynne-Harper detente, it will take two to tangohttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-it-takes-two-people-to-have-a-meeting/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-it-takes-two-people-to-have-a-meeting/#commentsFri, 28 Nov 2014 11:17:58 +0000Paul Wellshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=644913Paul Wells on why the feud between the Prime Minister and the premier of the country's largest province simmers on

In recent weeks, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has met with the prime ministers of India, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. He’s met with the presidents of France and China. He met football legend Pinball Clemons before an Argos game. He met Jim Prentice, who used to be minister of this and that in assorted Harper governments, a month after Prentice became Alberta’s new premier. But the Prime Minister hasn’t found time to meet Kathleen Wynne, the premier of what is still, inconveniently, Canada’s largest province.

“Dear Prime Minister Harper,” she writes on Sept. 16. “I am following up on our earlier exchange of letters following the June 12 provincial election . . . I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience.” She lists infrastructure, the auto sector, internal trade, federal transfers, Employment Insurance and pensions among the topics she wants to discuss.

On Nov. 17, two months later, the PM sends Wynne a reply. He does the thing where the letter begins “Dear Premier,” but he’s crossed “Premier” out and written “Kathleen” by hand, which seems like a promising personal touch. But it’s downhill from there: “I encourage you to work with the responsible federal ministers,” he writes, and adds that he’s sent copies of their exchange to eight members of his cabinet. No mention of a meeting between the two.

Well. Two can play at this game. Wynne’s next letter begins, “Dear Prime Minister,” but now Wynne does the cross-out thing and writes “Stephen” by hand. “You can be certain our officials will follow up” with the eight ministers on Harper’s CC list, she writes, but “I would still like to hear from you on my request for a meeting.” It’s been 11 months since the two met. During that time, she’s won a majority government in a provincial election. “I hope that we can meet soon, before the end of 2014.”

She needn’t hold her breath. Of course, the two can’t stand each other. They met once before, last December, to discuss pensions. Harper’s government spent two years looking at ways to expand the Canada Pension Plan. Jim Flaherty used to talk about a “modest” increase in premiums to pay for more generous benefits. Then he announced the federal government had no interest in changing the CPP. So, in that December 2013 meeting, she urged Harper to go back to the notion of expanding the pension plan.

It didn’t go well. “He kind of smirked, at one point,” she told the Toronto Star months later, during the provincial election campaign.

That description of Harper’s facial expression, five months after the fact, didn’t win her any new fans in Ottawa. “Ms. Wynne is misrepresenting the meeting,” Harper’s spokesman, Jason MacDonald, told the Star. The Harper government likes to cut taxes, Harper’s man said. The Wynne government was “proposing higher pension payroll taxes and more debt.”

She sure was, and she won big in the election that followed. Wynne’s advisers say part of the key to her success was the fight with Harper over pensions. They’d have exchanged emails with Jason MacDonald all day long if they could. A lot of Ontarians liked the idea of governments providing more stable retirement benefits down the road, even at higher short-term cost. Jim Flaherty used to be one of them.

Another was a nameless official in the federal Finance Department. According to documents released under access-to-information laws, this fellow explained to a colleague in the department that, “in the long run, expanding the CPP would bring economic benefits. Higher savings will lead to higher income in the future and higher consumption possibilities for seniors.” As my colleague John Geddes has reported, that bit of federal analysis was never included in responses the Finance Department sent to inquiring reporters. Only under the obligations of law was it released.

Understand that, despite her protestations of good faith, Wynne enjoys this feud with the Prime Minister. She’ll meet with him at the drop of a hat, but, as long as he refuses, her staff thinks it doesn’t hurt her with the electorate they need. In speeches, she’s not shy about sticking in the shiv and twisting. In an October speech in Ottawa, she said of her go-it-alone Ontario pension plan: “Someone motivated exclusively by small-government or market fundamentalist ideology might be tempted to say, ‘Forget it.’ ” That’s a direct reference to what Harper told her at their last meeting. “The federal government kept punting on its obligation,” she added, and, “We couldn’t wait any longer for leadership from Ottawa.”

Wynne herself stopped meeting with Rob Ford after the Toronto mayor began imploding. This is a comparison the Harper government would do well to avoid, both because Wynne continued meeting with Toronto municipal officials who weren’t named Ford, and because Harper used to spend a lot of time with Ford, a state of affairs which invites questions of judgment. Harper sees Wynne as the kind of person he went into politics to fight. She likes to remind him it’s true. The province and the nation will survive if they don’t meet. But Wynne is content with either co-operation or a fight, and Harper prefers the fight. Every time he has run for re-election, he has sought to present himself as a reasonable man defending Canada against ideologues. A reasonable prime minister would sit down with the premier of Ontario.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/how-it-takes-two-people-to-have-a-meeting/feed/20Ontario heads to the polls in municipal electionshttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-heads-to-the-polls-in-municipal-elections/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-heads-to-the-polls-in-municipal-elections/#commentsMon, 27 Oct 2014 10:22:28 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=630611Canada's largest city will be in the spotlight, but voters in London, Mississauga and Brampton will also be heading to the polls.

Canada’s largest city will be in the spotlight as residents decide whether to extend the Ford family’s reign by sending Rob Ford’s older brother to the mayor’s office – or going for former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory or ex-NDP MP Olivia Chow.

And while the race to replace Ford has drawn international attention, Toronto isn’t the only city replacing a controversial incumbent.

Voters in London will choose a successor to Joe Fontana, who resigned as mayor this summer after he was convicted of government fraud for forging a check while he was a Liberal M-P.

In nearby Brampton, a spending scandal could affect Mayor Susan Fennell’s tenure after an audit found more than $172,000 dollars in expenses that breached city policies – though some $41,000 was repaid, and a forensic audit later concluded that Fennell owed just $3,500.

And in northern Ontario, the aftermath of the deadly shopping mall roof collapse in Elliot Lake could influence the outcome of the election there.

A report released last week found municipal officials turned a blind eye to worsening conditions at the Algo Centre Mall before the roof collapsed in 2012, killing two women and injuring several others.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-heads-to-the-polls-in-municipal-elections/feed/0Ontario’s legislature resumes todayhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontarios-legislature-resumes-today-with-majority-liberal-government/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontarios-legislature-resumes-today-with-majority-liberal-government/#commentsMon, 20 Oct 2014 09:21:23 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=626023The government is looking to pass more than 20 bills that died when the spring election was called.

TORONTO – Ontario’s legislature resumes today with the Liberal government anxious to implement what it calls its “ambitious agenda” now that it has a majority.

The government is looking to pass more than 20 bills that died when the spring election was called.

Premier Kathleen Wynne says she also wants to move ahead with her efforts to create an Ontario pension plan, saying her implementation target of January 2017 sounds far away, but the government must “get moving” on the file.

Progressive Conservative Monte McNaughton says his party will spend the session holding the government to account, but he predicts that Ontario will see “more unemployment, more debt and cuts to front-line services” because of what he calls Liberal mismanagement.

The New Democrats – who held the balance of power in the previous session – say they’ll be the real opposition when the legislature resumes, as leader Andrea Horwath says the Progressive Conservatives are preoccupied with their leadership race.

The NDP says it plans to introduce a motion today that would require a public referendum before any government could sell the LCBO, OPG, Hydro One or Ontario Lottery and Gaming.

Wynne said the government will also be preparing for a fall economic statement and a new budget.

The Liberals are hoping to push through legislation including an infrastructure planning bill, a bill to index minimum wage to inflation and an accountability and transparency act, which would get MPPs to post expenses online and would make it an offence to destroy government records.

The opposition parties are expected to press the government for more details on a “bailout” of a real estate project in downtown Toronto.

The province gave a $224-million loan to help get a second tower built at the MaRS medical research centre across the street from the legislature, and paid $65 million to buy out an American real estate company involved in the project.

The government is also likely to face questions about alcohol sales and the possible sale of some public assets as it faces a $12.5-billion deficit.

The Liberals were under fire last session over allegedly deleted emails about their decisions to cancel gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga, which the auditor general has warned could cost taxpayers $1.1 billion. Wynne apologized repeatedly for the gas plants during this year’s election campaign, but has stressed the decisions were made on the watch of her predecessor, Dalton McGuinty.

The government is also aiming to re-introduce bills to help recoup unpaid traffic fines, to improve the College of Teachers’ discipline process and a youth smoking prevention act.

TORONTO – Minor hockey players in Ontario are now able to choose a dressing room based on whether they see themselves as male or female following settlement of a human rights complaint against Hockey Canada.

The agreement, which also includes an educational component, is aimed at protecting young transgender players from discrimination and harassment.

Jesse Thompson, 17, of Oshawa, Ont., who filed the complaint in August last year, said he was pleased with the result.

“I just hope that kids can see this and know that they don’t have to hide any more,” Thompson told The Canadian Press.

“They can come out and play their sport that they love, and they don’t have to stop playing it just because of how they are or who they are.”

The new policy, which applies to all minor players in Ontario under the auspices of Hockey Canada, also calls for the organization to educate its trainers and coaches on discrimination and harassment as well as on gender identity and expression.

In addition, players are entitled to be addressed by their preferred name, as well as by the pronoun that corresponds to their self-identified gender.

For Thompson, an avid hockey player now in Grade 12, the issue became acute about four or five years ago when he hit puberty.

“I’m just a boy. I’m just like any other kid out there growing up. I’m just a teenager,” he said.

“(But) once you get to a certain age, you are forced off into a different room, or basically a closet — sometimes they didn’t even have change rooms for girls.”

Thompson’s mother, Ailsa Thompson, said it was “very upsetting” when a coach booted her son from the boys dressing room on the basis that “she’s a girl.”

Other parents could also show a lack of understanding, she said.

“Parents would come in and kick Jesse out of the girls change room because it was for girls only.”

Hockey Canada refused to discuss the settlement but gender rights activists both inside and outside the sports world applauded.

Patrick Burke, co-founder of You Can Play, said he was grateful to Hockey Canada for agreeing to the changes and expressed admiration for Thompson.

“His courage will allow transgender hockey players to feel welcome and supported in their locker rooms,” Burke said in a statement. “Hockey is a game meant for everyone and we are excited for the day when all LGBT athletes feel secure in their ability to live their lives openly.”

Barbara Hall, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, called the change “another great milestone.”

Hockey Canada has also agreed to provide information about its amended policy to everyone involved with the organization and to post its new dressing room policy on its Ontario websites.

“I hope other hockey organizations around the world can see there’s a big change coming,” Thompson said. “It needs to be open to everyone to play, to feel comfortable, and to not feel like they’re going to be discriminated against.”

Lawyer Brenda Culbert, with the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, praised Hockey Canada for sending a strong message of inclusiveness that should resonate with communities across the country.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/transgender-rights-activists-celebrate-hockey-canada-settlement/feed/0Ontario seeking private companies to bid on running lotterieshttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/ontario-seeking-private-companies-to-bid-on-running-lotteries/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/ontario-seeking-private-companies-to-bid-on-running-lotteries/#commentsMon, 08 Sep 2014 17:09:28 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=604205TORONTO – The Ontario government is looking for a private company to run the province’s lottery business.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming is asking companies to bid on its $1.3-billion-a-year lottery…

Kathleen Wynne ’s clout among her colleagues has increased considerably in only a year.

All it took was for Ontario’s premier to win a surprise majority election victory for her Liberals in June’s provincial election. Now she has four years to advance her agenda: infrastructure spending, designing a health-care system for an aging population, and getting Ontario’s fiscal house in order.

She described these challenges to Maclean’s and discussed her budding partnership with her newly elected Quebec counterpart Philippe Couillard.

From the moment Ottawa clamped down on the use of temporary foreign workers by restaurants, we’ve heard dire warnings, especially from Alberta, that many businesses will be forced to shut down because they are unable to find workers. The counter-argument to that has always been: Why don’t you pay more, then?

Today, Statistics Canada released its job vacancy data for April and, as expected, it showed Alberta has the tightest job market in the country with a vacancy rate of 2.4 per cent, nearly double the national average. And indeed, in Alberta’s restaurant and hospitality sector, the hunger for workers is far higher with a job vacancy rate of 7.7 per cent, close to three times the national rate. Speaking to the Calgary Herald, Todd Hirsch, chief economist with ATB Financial, pinned the blame squarely on the changes to the temporary foreign worker (TFW) program.

But what about the argument that if Alberta restaurants want to attract workers, they should hike their pay? There’s a lot to suggest that’s exactly what they should be doing. Because, as the chart below shows, when you put the restaurant industries in Alberta and Ontario side by side, Alberta restaurants could be doing a lot more to lure staff.

In a nutshell, even though the restaurant job vacancy rate is off the charts in Alberta compared to Ontario, restaurant wages in Alberta have not risen any faster over the past three years than they have in Ontario. Yes, Alberta restaurants pay higher than Ontario restaurants, but shouldn’t supply and demand dictate that the pay out West be even higher, and rising faster, than back East?

When Rick Phibbs finished high school in Fort Erie, Ont., in 1984, Madonna was at the top of the music charts and the lure of the nearby General Motors plant meant few of his peers worried about what to do after graduation. “You could step out of high school and there were a variety of places where you could take up employment,” recalls Phibbs, 49, president of the chamber of commerce in this town of 30,000 south of Niagara Falls. “Fast-forward 30 years and so much has changed. We’ve been extremely hard hit.”

The long-term hemorrhaging of southern Ontario’s automaking and skilled manufacturing jobs helped turn the economy into a key ballot issue during June’s provincial election, which delivered a large majority to Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne. Now local business leaders like Phibbs hope the approval of the Liberal government’s budget this week will be followed by a new commitment to support a massive $400-million motorsports development project now winding its way toward final approval in the Niagara region. “It was a campaign issue here for us to get a provincial commitment for the infrastructure,” he says. “This is a $400-million direct investment [by the developers]. The potential is enormous and these opportunities don’t come to Fort Erie every day.”

The privately financed Canadian Motor Speedway project, planned as the first of its kind in the country, would have a 1.2-km banked oval track suitable for NASCAR racing as well as a 3.2-km road course and ancillary venues for auto research, retailing, hospitality and an outdoor professional-size hockey rink. The project’s Middle East backers say the raceway—billed as the “world’s first carbon-neutral speedway” because the facilities would run on energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gas emissions—would dwarf all others in the country. Spread over 332 hectares of mostly former farmland, the project would be more than double the size of Canada’s Wonderland, the country’s largest theme park.

While the project has galvanized some local opponents over concerns about noise pollution and the development of green space, Phibbs says the project is key to stopping the flood of high school graduates leaving town for jobs in Saskatchewan and Alberta. “The general consensus among the business community within Fort Erie is that [the speedway] is a must,” he says. “There has been so much hope tied to this serving as the catalyst to lift up the area.”

The hope behind the planned speedway is that the world’s largest governing body for stock car racing, NASCAR, will sanction a major event in Fort Erie and serve as a magnet for tens of thousands of U.S. and Canadian racing fans. To accommodate the expected influx of 65,000 spectators, speedway backers have asked for a $60-million provincial investment to widen the area’s narrow municipal roads and improve off-site infrastructure.

But unlike the plot of the 1989 film Field of Dreams, where an Iowa farmer lured fans to a baseball diamond he created in a cornfield, speedway backers have no assurances (ghostly or otherwise) that if they build it, NASCAR will come. While the project’s backers have hired champion NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon to help design the track, the league’s sanctioning body won’t authorize any race without first seeing the completed speedway. And that means taxpayers are being asked to contribute with no assurance any world-class racing events will ever take place.

Still, the project’s backers, a Kuwaiti private equity firm called the International Investor (TII), and investment management company Emirates Consulting of Dubai, argue the diversified project will generate revenue from its extra features, even if the track itself fails to secure a NASCAR race. They are already seeing demand for the site’s proposed race-driver training institute and light industrial park aimed at motorsport suppliers, in addition to campgrounds and entertainment facilities. “For us, this is way more than just a track,” says Ibrahim Abou Taleb, a partner in charge of investment and finance at TII, the majority investor, and the CEO of Canadian Motor Speedway. “It is family entertainment. There are many different pieces put together.”

According to a 2008 consultant’s report commissioned by the speedway developers, the site would create about 3,000 direct and indirect jobs for the Niagara region, assuming it hosts three major events and five minor ones each year. By way of comparison, economic spinoffs from the Formula One Grand Prix in Montreal are estimated at $70 million, generating or maintaining 1,400 jobs. Three levels of government (municipal, Quebec and federal) have pledged a total of $187 million in support for that race over the next decade.

The prospect of new jobs in Fort Erie has generated local political support for the project. “Tourism is big in our area and the speedway would certainly help the industry grow,” says Wayne Gates, the recently re-elected NDP member of provincial Parliament for Niagara Falls.

The Liberals have not committed any specific amounts but say they have “planned improvements” to nearby arteries like the Queen Elizabeth Way and Bowen Road interchange. “We will continue to work with the owners of the speedway and the local municipality to make appropriate improvements so that the community and the province are able to benefit from the jobs and increased tourism that this exciting project has the potential to deliver,” says Ontario Minister of Economic Development Brad Duguid.

Yet the development of the Canadian Motor Speedway project bucks a bigger trend in the racing industry whereby owners modernize aging tracks rather than build new ones. And it shows the challenge the new speedway could face as U.S. NASCAR tracks grapple with declining attendance. NASCAR is the second-most watched television sport in the U.S., behind the National Football League. International Speedway Corp., which owns and operates 13 tracks across the U.S., just signed a decade-long broadcast rights agreement beginning in 2015.

But despite improved earnings during the second quarter of 2014, publicly traded International Speedway is also facing broader industry challenges, including a general slump in revenues since the economic crash of 2008, wrote Wells Fargo Securities analyst Tim Conder in a recent note to clients. Since its peak year in 2007, the company’s sales have fallen 25 per cent to US$613 million last year.

In Canada, NASCAR launched its Canadian Tire Series in 2007, with racing events held at oval tracks and on road courses in different provinces from late spring through early fall. In 2012, however, racing promoter François Dumontier pulled the plug on NASCAR’s Montreal event, telling reporters he failed to make a profit because he was unable to secure one of the league’s premier Sprint Cup races. Dumontier, whose company Octane Management filed for bankruptcy in 2012 with more than $5 million in debt, still promotes the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.

There are currently no NASCAR Sprint Cup events held in Canada, but Phibbs is convinced that the Fort Erie speedway will host the first. The speedway’s location near Niagara Falls and the U.S. border make it a good draw, he says.

Besides, the developers say, they wouldn’t have spent seven years and $14 million of their own money on a project that depends entirely on just one race. In addition to NASCAR, they want to attract other automotive events, such as the Indy Racing League. In planning since 2007, the speedway received final approval from the Ontario Municipal Board in 2013. This spring, the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority asked for supplementary information, and the developers must now provide additional studies.

Phibbs, who runs a family-owned paving business, says he believes the project is now in the home stretch. For all its benefits, though, he doesn’t expect the speedway to replace the high-paying auto jobs of his youth. GM employed about 9,000 people in Canada last year, down from 20,000 just over a decade ago. Still, Phibbs hopes the project will help fill restaurants, shops and create new industries by the time his youngest daughter is ready to finish high school.

“Who knows what this would mean for her in 10 years from now,” he says. “But if we keep the status quo, there sure isn’t a lot.”

OTTAWA – Monday’s four federal byelections made one thing clear: Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have momentum on their side.

The Liberals stole one riding — the coveted Trinity-Spadina in downtown Toronto — from the NDP, easily held another Toronto riding and gave the Conservatives a run for their money in the Tory bastion of Fort McMurray-Athabasca, in Alberta’s oilsands heartland.

The Conservatives handily retained another Alberta riding, Macleod, but even there, Liberal support almost quadrupled.

The results reflect just how far the Liberals, reduced to a third-party rump in 2011, have bounced back in the year since Trudeau took the helm, increasing their share of the vote in all four ridings over 2011 — dramatically so in three of them.

Conservatives and New Democrats, on the other hand, lost vote share in all four.

The biggest coup for Trudeau was snatching Trinity-Spadina from the NDP, a seat held since 2006 by Olivia Chow, widow of beloved former NDP leader Jack Layton.

Star Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, a popular former city councillor, bested the NDP’s Joe Cressy by some 20 percentage points in the only riding where the New Democrats were a factor.

The win is a big boost for the Liberals in their battle with the NDP over which opposition party is best positioned to replace Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in next year’s general election.

Voters in Toronto “have sent a clear message that the Liberal party is the only progressive alternative to Stephen Harper,” Trudeau crowed in a written statement as the results became clear.

It could also be a portent of things to come in 2015. Trinity-Spadina has always been something of a bellwether: when the Liberals have won the riding in the past, they’ve won power nationally; when the NDP has won the riding, the Conservatives have taken power.

However, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair reminded disappointed New Democrats that Trinity-Spadina will not exist in the 2015 election. Due to redistribution, the riding will be divvied up among three new constituencies.

“The work you did now is in the bank,” Mulcair told party faithful at Cressy’s campaign party. “In 15 months … we’ll see you back here.”

Mike Layton, city councillor and son of the late NDP leader, reminded Cressy supporters that the riding has swung between Liberals and New Democrats for decades, and that even Chow lost in her first two attempts.

“Well folks, we’ve been here before, we’ve been up against these mountains and we’ve conquered them before,” Layton said.

The Liberals hung on Monday to another Toronto riding, Scarborough-Agincourt, where the Conservatives tried to appeal to the conservative values of the ethnically diverse suburban population with attacks on Trudeau’s support for legalization of marijuana.

The riding had long been the personal fiefdom of Jim Karygiannis, a bare-knuckle political brawler who held the seat for the Liberals for 25 years before quitting to run municipally. His departure gave Conservatives hope they could score an upset.

But in the end, Liberal Arnold Chan, a lawyer and former political aide, actually increased his party’s share of the vote to almost 60 per cent —up about 15 points from 2011 and some 30 points ahead of Conservative Trevor Ellis.

Chan called his victory a repudiation of the Conservative party’s “negative attacks” on Trudeau, accusing it of trying to suppress votes by scheduling the byelections for the day before Canada Day, when many voters were taking an extended weekend.

Turnout was actually highest in Trinity-Spadina, at just over 30 per cent, and Scarborough-Agincourt, where it fell just shy of the same mark. Less than 19 per cent of eligible voters turned out in Macleod and only 15 per cent in Fort McMurray.

In Fort McMurray, the Liberals surged from a meagre 10 per cent of the vote in 2011 to more than 35 per cent — enough to put a scare into the Conservatives, if not defeat them.

David Yurdiga, former reeve and Athabasca county councillor, captured about 47 per cent of the vote to hold the seat for the governing party, besting Liberal Kyle Harrietha by roughly 12 percentage points. But the Tory share of the vote was still down significantly from the 72 per cent it won in 2011.

The surge in Liberal support in Fort McMurray suggests Trudeau is managing to turn around perceptions of his party in Alberta — a political wasteland for the Grits since Trudeau’s late father, Pierre, imposed the reviled national energy program more than three decades ago.

“Huge numbers of Liberals that we’d never before seen came out and sent a very, very clear message: that Albertans are tired of being taken for granted and are looking very closely at the 2015 election,” Trudeau told party faithful at Vaughan’s victory party.

In the southern part of the province, former newspaper editor John Barlow held Macleod for the Conservatives. He captured about 69 per cent of the vote — more than 50 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Liberal Dustin Fuller.

Still, even in Macleod, the Tory vote share was down about 10 points from 2011 while the Liberal share almost quadrupled.

“This is the culmination of eight months of hard work and it definitely feels worthwhile today,” Barlow said in a victory speech that came just 30 minutes after the polls closed.

More than 100 supporters cheered loudly when he entered the Italian restaurant in High River, accompanied by his wife Louise and children.

“What this really came down to was passion and how hard we worked. The message we had is Macleod is not going to be forgotten. We cannot take Macleod for granted.”

Barlow said he intends to locate his constituency office in High River, which has been decimated since massive floods last year turned the town’s streets into rivers of water.

“If there’s one issue that really bound Macleod together over the past year was that flood,” he said.

“We have a lot of work to do and I will be here from this day forward to make sure that work gets done.”

Elliott is deputy leader of the party and has served as critic for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and Mental Health Reform.

Tory MPP and labour critic Monte McNaughton said he is also “seriously” considering a run for the leadership.

“I’ve spent every day since the election making calls to party activists across the province and to caucus members,” he told The Canadian Press.

“I really am overwhelmed and humbled by the support that I’ve been receiving across Ontario.”

It could be a crowded field. Tory energy critic Lisa MacLeod, who once worked for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, appears to be testing the waters, penning a column in the Toronto Star calling for a new leader “who understands urban, suburban and rural concerns.”

Her Ottawa riding of Nepean-Carleton “is a microcosm of the growing and changing Ontario that our party must represent,” she wrote Tuesday.

There’s also a campaign underway by some party activists to draft federal Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt into the race.

Other names mentioned as possible candidates include Tory MPP and finance critic Vic Fedeli, as well as party president Richard Ciano.

Educated as a lawyer, Elliott entered politics when she won a seat in Whitby, east of Toronto, in the March 2006 byelection.

During the 2009 leadership race, Elliott preached the Red Tory mantra of fiscal conservatism and social responsibility — very different from Flaherty who during his 2002 leadership bid proposed jailing the homeless.

She rejected any political labels — “I define myself as a Conservative, period” — saying her beliefs are rooted in her experiences as a mother, businesswoman and advocate for people with special needs, including her son John.

Following the June 12 election, Elliott said it was “a combination of things” that drove voters from the PCs to the Liberals.

“We ran a principled campaign and I’m very proud, (but) it just wasn’t meant to be,” she said.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/sources-say-christine-elliott-to-run-for-ontario-pc-leadership/feed/2Wynne tours tornado-damaged Angus, Ontariohttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/wynne-tours-tornado-damaged-angus-ontario/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/wynne-tours-tornado-damaged-angus-ontario/#commentsFri, 20 Jun 2014 17:28:01 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www.macleans.ca/?p=572099"It's quite a miracle that no one was seriously hurt," she said of the tornado that hit the community Tuesday afternoon

ANGUS, Ont. – It’s too early to say if provincial funding will be needed to help people rebuild their lives after a tornado tore a path of destruction through Angus, Ont., Premier Kathleen Wynne said Friday after seeing the devastation first hand.

“It’s impossible at this point to be able to assess what the costs would be that are not covered by insurance,” Wynne said of the property damage from the Tuesday afternoon twister in the community 100 kilometres north of Toronto.

“For the most part the damage that has been done is private property, but those assessments have not all been done yet, so it’s unclear what’s insured, what’s not insured.”

Municipal officials will let the province know what the costs are when the bills come in, added Wynne.

“There is provincial disaster relief funding that is always in place when one of these terrible incidents happens, but there’s a process to go through,” she said.

“There will be no break in the communication between the on the ground work that’s being done and the support that we will provide provincially.”

Media were not allowed to tag along because of safety concerns as Wynne went behind the police tape for a close-up look at the damage, which she said was more stark than she had expected from the pictures on television.

“Having seen the damage, it’s quite a miracle that no one was seriously hurt,” she said.

“This happened at a time of day when kids were home from school and families were getting ready for supper, and it’s quite remarkable that no one was hurt and that people made it into their basements and were safe.”

Wynne met privately with some residents whose homes were damaged by the twister, which sheared roofs off of many houses, snapped trees in half and flipped over cars.

Despite their personal losses and suffering, they praised the first responders and the way the community pulled together after the storm as “terrific,” said Wynne.

“They’re still in quite a bit of shock from the impact this has had on their lives (and) they’re worried about the timing of getting back into their homes,” she said.

“Of course there is a little bit of frustration about wanting to get back into their homes, but we have to make sure that everyone is safe.”

Extra building inspectors were being brought in because even houses that look safe may not be because they may have twisted on their foundations from the force of the wind, said Wynne.

“There is a lot of unsafe debris that makes it difficult for people to get to their homes,” she said. “Debris is an impersonal word. There are kids dolls that have been tossed out of their houses, very personal belongings that people will need to sort through now, so it’s a time consuming and painstaking and process.”

Wynne said video and pictures of the devastation don’t tell the whole story.

“To actually see the degree to which people’s lives have been disrupted is very compelling, and it certainly helps us to understand how important it is that we make sure that safe conditions are in place before people move back.”

Mayor Terry Dowdall of Essa Township, which includes Angus, said volunteers from the Mennonite Disaster Service arrived Friday to help the town with the clean up efforts.

“The Mennonite disaster relief organization, they’re here today and are already working as we speak to clean up those yards, making it safe for the adjusters to go into those houses,” said Dowdall.

Emergency officials allowed some residents to briefly return home to retrieve belongings, but others were still being kept from their badly-damaged houses.

Seen from above, it’s a startling scene— homes stripped of their entire second storeys, shingles ripped from dozens of rooftops, and beams and shattered fences littering backyards.

Hundreds of residents were displaced after the tornado ravaged Angus Tuesday, forcing it to declare a state of emergency. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne toured the community 100 km north of Toronto Friday, saying it was a miracle nobody was badly hurt in the disaster.

Steve Jolliffe, a Canada Post contractor and recreational videographer, captured an aerial view of the tornado’s aftermath in his devastated Angus neighbourhood not from a helicopter, but with a drone: a ‘Hexacopter’ outfitted with a GoPro camera and stabilizer. The set-up allowed him to get a close-up look at the extent of the destruction.

Jolliffe lives in the neighbourhood with his fiancée: their home was among those damaged by the tornado. He’s hoping to be able to return as soon as next week.

ANGUS, Ont. – Hundreds of residents in a central Ontario community devastated by a tornado that blew out windows, ripped off roofs and downed trees are being asked to stay away from their homes until authorities assess the damage.

The twister ripped through the Essa Township, about 100 kilometres north of Toronto, at about 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Essa Township Mayor Terry Dowdall said about 100 homes were damaged in Angus, which is located in the township. The provincial police said three people suffered minor injuries.

Dowdall, who joined other emergency officials this morning to give a brief update on the situation, said he has never before seen such destruction in the community.

“Weather seems to be changing I think in the province of Ontario,” he said. “But I’ve never seen, and basically no one’s seen devastation quite like this (here).”

Essa Fire Chief Cynthia Tustin said it was “amazing” that the twister touched down at the “right time of day.”

“People weren’t asleep… people were up and people were able to be aware of what’s going on,” she said.

Kevin Thompson, 42, came home from the dentist to find the tornado had torn through his neighbourhood, ripping shingles off his roof and whipping an Adirondacks chair through his kitchen wall.

“It was sort of surreal because when you pulled into the subdivision, the upper part was great, and we saw people standing there pointing down towards our home,” he said Wednesday as he stood across the street from his battered brick house.

“You start looking up the street and down the street and you see houses that are totally gone and nothing there.”

Thompson and his wife were able to gather a few clothes and feed their cats before they were forced out of the house again. He said waiting for clearance to go back has been “frustrating,” but he understands the safety issues at stake.

Provincial police Const. Kelly Daniels said the priority now is to ensure homes are safe enough for people to go back inside and retrieve needed personal items like medication.

Police asked directly affected residents not to return to their homes “for their own personal safety.”

Daniels said residents who have been displaced will be escorted by police and fire officials when they go inside and it will be done home by home.

“Now that we know everyone is safe, our job is to protect their property,” said Daniels.

Premier Kathleen Wynne said her thoughts and prayers were with the families who have lost their homes and promised to visit the affected area in the coming days.

“I know that the people of Ontario are strong,” Wynne said in a statement.

“The community has pulled together and is rallying around those who have been most impacted by the storm. This caring and compassion will help them as they rebuild.”

Emergency officials were holding a meeting with residents later Wednesday at the Angus recreation centre to discuss what happens next.

“We’re moving forward, we have a new day and a new plan,” said Dowdall, adding building officials would immediately begin assessing properties.

He said the top priority would be to ensure the buildings are safe before residents are allowed to return.

Police tape cordoned off one of the hardest hit areas, where broken tree branches piled up with toppled fences, crumpled bicycles, lawn chairs and roof shingles.

Curious residents slowed their cars to look at the wreckage, with some stopping to take photos of the grim scenery.

Environment Canada said preliminary estimates suggest the tornado that struck Angus was an EF-2 with estimated wind speeds near 180 km/h. The weather agency said the third tornado of the season tracked east from Angus to Barrie.

A survey team returned to the area Wednesday to further assess the nature and severity of the damage from Angus to Barrie, the weather agency said.

The weather agency had issued tornado warnings for several communities in the area on Tuesday as a line of severe thunderstorms with embedded tornadoes moved into the Lake Simcoe region.

Tustin said the fire department also sent messages out by Twitter warning people to take cover and get into their basements if possible.

The storms also cut electricity to several thousand homes and businesses, but power had been restored to most by morning.

TORONTO – The stage has been set for a June election in Ontario after NDP Leader Andrea Horwath announced she has lost confidence in Premier Kathleen Wynne and the province’s minority Liberal government.

Horwath said she can’t continue to prop up a government that has been the focus of scandal after scandal and her party will vote against Thursday’s budget.

“I cannot in good conscience support a government that people don’t trust anymore,” she said Friday.

“This budget is not a solid plan for the future. It’s a mad dash to escape the scandals by promising the moon and the stars.”

The Liberals haven’t kept the promises they made to the NDP in last year’s budget, so she can’t trust them to keep the 70 new promises made in this year’s spending plan, Horwath said.

She said the scandals surrounding the costly cancellation of two gas plants, the Ornge air ambulance service and potentially unsafe girders that were installed on a parkway in Windsor proved too much for her caucus.

The Progressive Conservatives vowed to vote against the budget even before they saw it, and Horwath said the NDP will join them to defeat the fiscal plan on a confidence vote.

However, Wynne could decide not to wait for the budget votes — there will actually be two — and ask Lt.-Gov. David Onley to dissolve the legislature and call an election.

Wynne said she will make an announcement later this afternoon on whether the Liberals will drop the writ immediately, or whether they will force a vote on the budget in the legislature.

“I’m disappointed that (Horwath) wouldn’t have a meeting with me. I think there’s a lot in this budget that needs to be implemented in this province,” she told Belleville radio station CJBQ.

“But I’ve said all along … if we didn’t have a partner in the legislature, then we would take this budget to the people of the province, and we will do that.”

The New Democrats propped up the Liberals in the last two budgets, but negotiated major changes in each including a tax on incomes over $500,000 and a 15 per cent average cut in auto insurance premiums.

Several large labour groups, including the Unifor union and the Ontario Federation of Labour, urged the NDP to pass the budget and avoid an election, but public sector unions complained the fiscal plan puts jobs at risk.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union — which has been in a tough labour fight with the Liberals — said they support Horwath’s call to go to the polls.

Despite the left-leaning goodies in the budget, such as a proposed Ontario pension plan, the Liberals can’t be trusted, said OPSEU president Warren “Smokey” Thomas.

There needs to be an election, even if it runs the risk of producing a right-wing Progressive Conservative government that “hates unions” and will tear down the province’s public services, he said.

Thomas said he won’t tell his members how to vote, but he believes some will support the NDP while others will vote Liberals.

Despite the sheer number and size of spending announcements in the Ontario budget, a lack of detail and the fact that the bulk of the budget was leaked last month leaves few surprises. Instead of leaving the budget lock-up feeling that I have learned something new, I am left with four unresolved questions.

1.Income tax increases – how much revenue will they really raise?

The budget raises the rate of Ontario income tax on those earning between $150,000 and $220,000 from 11.16 to 12.16 percent, and from 11.16 to 13.16 percent for those earning between $220,000 and $514,090. The government estimates that the measure will increase government revenues by $635 million in 2014-15, $685 million in 2015-16 and $745 million in 2016-17. There is no indication in the budget how these numbers are estimated, so I spoke to government officials, who indicated that these are ‘straight-line’ estimates and do not take into account possible behavioural responses by these high income earners. Given the many options that these persons have to restructure activities to reduce their tax burden, the actual amount of revenue raised will be significantly lower.

2.Green bonds – what’s the point?

I was disappointed to see no new information on issuing green bonds to finance projects, rather than simply using standard bonds. Green bonds come with higher compliance costs, to verify (or possibly certify) that the money raised is being spent on green projects. The benefit of green status to the bond issuer is lower interest rates, as these financial instruments attract those desiring green investments. As it has in the past, the government has indicated that they intend “to issue these bonds with the same yield as Ontario bonds of comparable term and size”. If that is the case then why bother with green bonds at all, given the higher compliance costs for the province?

3.Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) – is it truly compulsory?

This budget provides details on the government’s proposed ORPP plan. Both the workplace and the individual would each remit “up to” 1.9% of a worker’s first $90,000 of income to the plan. The contributions, expected to be in the ballpark of $3.5 billion per year, would go into a fund that would be managed at arm’s length from the government. The plan would not begin until 2017, perhaps to avoid concerns of placing additional payroll taxes on firms during a relatively weak labour market.

Although the plan is marketed as mandatory, a clause in the budget provides an escape by stating “those already participating in a comparable workplace pension plan would not be required to enrol in the ORPP.” It is unclear if the decision to opt out is placed on the worker or the firm. It is hard to imagine a worker choosing to opt out, given that they would receive all the benefits of the plan but their employer pays half of the cost.

4.A $2.5 Billion Jobs and Prosperity Fund – what are the checks and balances?

As with green bonds, there were no new details in the budget on the $2.5 billion, ten-year fund designed to “attract significant business investments.” We are told that with this fund the Province will have the flexibility to offer strategic incentives where necessary to secure key anchor investments in Ontario’s interest, help support growth, and create well-paid jobs at home”. What we are not told is who will determine the funding decisions, the criteria of the fund, and what mechanisms will be put in place to ensure that corporations that accept government funds will live up to their obligations. There was a lack of transparency in both the Cisco and Open Text deals, so I am not optimistic that this fund will be run in a way such that taxpayers can determine if they are receiving value for money.

Should the federal and Ontario governments be investing more in automotive? A recent report by the Office of Automotive and Vehicle Research thinks so. I think there is a very strong case for additional spending in automotive—but not for the positive reasons that the Office describes.

The economic rationale behind government spending in the automotive industry is significantly different than the Ontario government’s Cisco deal. A deal with Chrysler is largely defensive, to ensure the continued existence of the industry in southwestern Ontario.

Pete Mateja of that Office of Automotive and Vehicle Research is quoted as saying “The Chrysler Windsor plant, we definitely need to hold on to it or it’s going to be devastating for Windsor.” The loss of the Chrysler’s Windsor Assembly would put nearly 5,000 out of work directly, and thousands more indirectly, as Chrysler’s parts suppliers would follow with their own layoffs and closures. Those thrown out of work would have difficulty finding new jobs, as their existing skillsets are not otherwise in demand, a phenomenon economists refer to as structural unemployment.

High rates of unemployment have a budgetary cost to governments, from direct spending on employment insurance to a rise in health care costs as chronic unemployment diminishes mental and physical health. Since governments are going to have to spend significant amounts of money if the plant closes, why not simply pay to keep the plant open instead?

This “why not pay to keep the plant open” argument has been frequently used to rationalize government spending in automotive, most notably the U.S. Chrysler bailout of 1979. In the short run, this spending works as designed: the plant stays open, cars get produced, older workers retire with pensions and benefits and young workers are hired to replace them. The company, however—knowing that the spectre of structural unemployment still exists if the plant were to close—is always in the position to ask for more money by threatening to leave the jurisdiction. The initial government investment did not solve the structural unemployment issue so much as transfer it from one generation to the next. Current government investment in automotive creates the conditions for future structural unemployment, creating a cycle of corporate dependency on government.

It may be possible to structure these deals to avoid the dependency cycle. This cycle can only be broken if no young workers are locked into a system where they acquire a skillset that will not be in demand if the factory closes. My somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggestion has always been that any company taking money from government on such grounds not be allowed to hire anyone under the age of 45. I am uncertain if that is practical (or even constitutional), but there may be more subtle ways of accomplishing the same thing. One such way is by structuring the government “investment” in the form of a wage subsidy, where only workers with 15 or more years of experience are eligible for the subsidy.

We often hear that banks that are too big to fail are too big (or risky) to exist. The same clearly holds true for some automotive plants, which have gotten this size with the help of government handouts. But governments are not currently in a position to start saying no. The cost of high levels of structural unemployment is simply too high to allow automotive manufacturing to disappear overnight. Rather, a strategy for a controlled exit is needed, where government helps support existing workers while preventing a next generation of structural unemployment from emerging.

In a state with a long history of baffling direct-democracy campaigns, the “Six Californias” ballot initiative has got to be weirdest. The grandiose brainchild of a billionaire tech investor (isn’t it always?), the proposed constitutional amendment would seek to carve up America’s most populous state into six smaller ones—among them, Jefferson, Central California, West California and Silicon Valley, with a chunk of the state’s US$144-billion debt load to be apportioned to each based on the size of their populations. “California, as it is, is ungovernable,” the venture capitalist Tim Draper said, pitching the idea. Most commentators assumed it was all a big joke. Then the office of California’s secretary of state permitted Draper to start collecting signatures. If organizers get 807,615 names by July 18, the proposal will go to a vote in November.

Let’s skip the part where we pretend the campaign to break up California has a hope of success. It would need approval from Congress, and that’s not going to happen. But if Draper wanted to spark a debate about the state’s finances, it’s already working. The narrative of California as a dysfunctional mess is certain to gather steam in the months ahead.

It’s a debate that Ontarians, and those living in almost every other province, might want to follow. On March 18 the Fraser Institute updated a report it first released last year comparing the government debt loads of Ontario and California. It’s ugly. California may have a dubious reputation as one of America’s chief fiscal basket cases, but next to Ontario, the state looks positively restrained. Ontario’s gross government debt, the amount it owes in the form of government-issued bonds, stood at $267.5 billion at the end of fiscal 2012, nearly double California’s US$144.8-billion burden. Relative to the size of their respective economies, California’s debt was equal to 7.6 per cent of GDP. In Ontario, that figure was 41 per cent.

Perhaps the most disturbing way to look at these debt burdens is as the amount residents in each jurisdiction must shoulder. On a per capita basis, California’s gross debt was $3,844. In Ontario, the per capita debt load was five times that amount.

Now, comparing debt loads between the two countries is always difficult. For one thing Canada and the provinces, unlike U.S. states, use the measure of net debt, which factors in the value of certain government assets. For that reason the study’s authors looked to Ontario’s gross debt outstanding, the amount it owes in government-issued bonds.

The provinces also face much larger health care costs than U.S. states. But that excuse only goes so far. While government spending in Ontario soared over the last decade, driving up the province’s debt, the growth in spending on health care has actually shrunk, down from 12 per cent in 2003-04 to just two per cent, according to the Conference Board of Canada. Instead, a huge swath of Ontario’s debt was piled on chasing job-creation strategies that did little to create any jobs.

Ontario’s Liberals under Premier Kathleen Wynne are doubling down on that strategy. Last November, the government signalled it was prepared to abandon its policy of austerity, such as it was, to pursue further stimulus spending. So when the Ontario Tories released government briefing notes from a year ago showing the government was “not on track” to achieve deficit targets that would see it return to a balanced budget by 2018, few could really be surprised.

Ontario is far from alone in carrying the weight of bloated overspending. Using bonded debt figures for the provinces, and data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the accompanying chart shows the per capita debt burden for the 10 worst provinces and states. You’ll note eight are Canadian. (Saskatchewan and Alberta are well down the list, at 20th and 31st places respectively.) At number 25, California is better placed than every province, save Alberta.

The irony is that California, so often used as an example of fiscal irresponsibility, has made great strides. Tax hikes and deep spending cuts, with help from an improving economy, have turned deficits into a forecast for multi-billion surpluses, money that Gov. Jerry Brown says would go to tackle California’s “mountain of long-term liabilities.” A lesson in prudence from an unlikely teacher.

Earlier this week, the Ontario government announced released its Minimum Wage Advisory Panel’s report and recommendation. One of the big takeaways of the report was that the minimum wage should be tied to Ontario’s rate of inflation. This morning, the province took this advice by raising the minimum wage to $11 an hour, effective June 1, 2014.

The government arrived at the $11 figure by adjusting the current minimum wage for the accumulated level of inflation between 2010 (when the minimum wage was last increased) and now. This calculation provides a minimum wage in the range of $10.90; the government then rounded up to $11. This is far from an ideal process, as it presupposes that the minimum wage was at the optimal level in 2010. Given how little we know about the minimum wage, it would be surprising if the government got it right four years ago.

Unusually, the government’s decision is one of those rare cases in which a less than ideal process provided a great answer.

Based on what we know about the minimum wage, I have estimated that Ontario can raise it to $11.25 before there are significant labour market effects. The two figures are close enough that I support the government’s increase to $11, despite my misgivings at the process which provided their answer.

This announcement is likely to please almost no one. The Ontario government was in a tough spot, with some business groups claiming, without a great deal of evidence, that even a small increase in the minimum wage is likely to cause widespread unemployment.

On the other hand, advocates of a $14/hr minimum wage refuse to acknowledge that there can ever be a trade-off between the minimum wage and employment or hours worked and the minimum wage can be raised indefinitely without consequence. Both positions are almost certainly incorrect. But as with too many areas, supporters of evidence-based policy are drowned out by groups espousing hard-line ideological positions.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/why-the-hike-in-ontario-minimum-wage-will-satisfy-no-one/feed/87NDP would drive Ontario ‘into the ditch’ with unrealistic policies: Hudakhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ndp-would-drive-ontario-into-the-ditch-with-unrealistic-policies-hudak/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ndp-would-drive-ontario-into-the-ditch-with-unrealistic-policies-hudak/#commentsSun, 19 Jan 2014 15:01:11 +0000The Canadian Presshttp://www2.macleans.ca/?p=455920TORONTO – Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are signalling they are as concerned about defeating the New Democrats in two byelections next month as they are about the governing Liberals.
In a…

TORONTO – Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are signalling they are as concerned about defeating the New Democrats in two byelections next month as they are about the governing Liberals.

In a recent speech to the Cambridge and Kitchener-Waterloo Chambers of Commerce, PC Leader Tim Hudak used just half a sentence to dismiss the Liberals as having no plan to create jobs.

Instead Hudak singled out the New Democrats for his strongest attack, warning they would drive Ontario “into the ditch with the same reckless abandon as Bob Rae.”

The legacy of the unpopular Rae government of the early 1990s remains a millstone around the neck of the NDP, despite the fact Rae long ago became a Liberal.

Hudak went on to say the NDP’s “ill-thought and unrealistic policies would result in more debt and even higher taxes and electricity costs,” and insisted only his Conservatives have a plan to turn things around and create jobs.

The Tories are going after the NDP, as well as the Liberals, because “there are no meaningful points of distinction” between the two parties, said PC party spokesman Alan Sakach.

“It’s the same high-tax, job-losing approach,” he said.

“So the challenge we’re up against is a left-of-centre, Liberal-NDP-government-union coalition that’s pretty much going to try to stop anyone who has a plan to stop the entitlements and make progress on the real problems we have like jobs.”

“The NDP will say what people want to hear, but they still have no plan,” he added. “Their unrealistic ideas are just going to drive up taxes, cost us more jobs just like in the Rae days.”

The New Democrats said they weren’t surprised the Tories were getting “desperate, nasty and negative” because people like what they hear from their leader, Andrea Horwath.

“New Democrats have a track record of making life affordable, lowering hydro and auto insurance bills, and providing tax relief for middle-class families,” said NDP house leader Gilles Bisson. “Tim Hudak’s probably trying to distract attention from his own plans.”

Wynne also said Hudak wants to “pick up where he left off with Mike Harris” and start cutting and slashing government services, including health care.

The New Democrats don’t hold either of the two ridings up for grabs in the Feb. 13 byelections. The Liberals held Niagara Falls and the suburban Toronto riding of Thornhill was Conservative.

The NDP took Kitchener-Waterloo from the Conservatives in a 2012 byelection and took Liberal seats in London and Windsor last summer, and is the only party with nothing to lose and everything to gain in the byelections.

The outcome of next month’s votes won’t change the minority status of the Liberal government, but could show which party has momentum heading into a widely-expected spring election amid indications the NDP won’t support the government’s budget for a third consecutive year.

The Tories also questioned the wisdom of Wynne’s decision to call the two byelections next month at an estimated cost of $425,000 each.

“What a waste of money if we’re actually going to be in a general election like six weeks down the road,” said Sakach.